Ep #39: How to Stop Buffering

Welcome to The Alpha Male Coach Podcast, the only podcast that teaches men the cognitive mastery and alpha-mindset that it takes to become an influential and irresistible man of confidence. Here’s your host, certified life coach and international man of mystery, Kevin Aillaud.

What’s up my brothers? Welcome back to The Alpha Male Coach Podcast. I am your host Kevin Aillaud and today we’re talking about buffering. So last three weeks, the last three episodes was about health, and last week I mentioned to you that term, that thing we do, those things we do called buffering and how it relates to our health.

And I want to take this episode and really go a lot deeper into what buffering is because it’s something that a lot of people do and it’s something that prevents us from being our best self. When we buffer, we’re really in that beta condition. So buffering is when we use external objects, external things to change how we feel emotionally.

So I mentioned it last week because when we buffer, what we’re doing is we have something in our life, we have a habit that we do that we don’t want. We’re compelled, we have a compulsion to do something, to buffer, and it leaves us with a net negative, it leaves us with a depleted health.

Buffering is something we do to keep from fully experiencing our lives. We do it to hide from reality, we buffer to procrastinate, we buffer so that we don’t have to show up in our life and we don’t have to face the music. We don’t have to face those uncomfortable emotions. We don’t have to feel frustrated or bored or angry or doubtful of ourselves. We don’t feel any of that insecurity and so we just go, we buffer it all away.

We don’t want to face the truth of our lives because we don’t want to experience any type of negative emotion. We feel entitled to feel happiness and pleasure all the time, right? It’s the 21st century. Why not? Here we have all this wonderful science and technology. We should feel happy and be filled with pleasure all the time, right guys? No, you guys know this.

See, the problem is we’re constantly bombarded with suggestions of ways to feel pleasure. This is the advertising. This is consumerism. You should go eat something, you should go buy something, you should go do that activity. There’s a lot of money to be made on pleasure. There’s the pleasure of food, there’s the pleasure of drinking, there’s the pleasure of sex.

Many, many organizations and corporations take advantage of that by not just playing to our natural inclination to seek pleasure, but by compounding it by selling us things that are concentrated pleasure, guys, or pleasure in heavy doses. So that’s the thing. Again, there’s nothing wrong with eating. Food, we need to eat. We get pleasure from eating. Our bodies have adapted that way. We have received pleasure from eating.

It’s like our brain telling our body eat and live. We have to do it. But what we have now is we have high doses of concentrated flours and sugars that give us all kinds of that same pleasure, that same dopamine in small quantities. And what happens is our brain ends up deciding that these things are almost as important as survival because of the dopamine hit we get from pleasure is the most important thing. That’s what the brain lives on.

When you get that dopamine hit, the brain is basically telling the body this is what you need to do to survive. The more we purchase, the more we purchase. The more we eat, the more we eat. The more we drink, the more we drink. The more we watch porn, the more we watch porn. We need more because we build up resistance to it and then we need a higher dose in order to get the same dopamine that we were getting before.

It becomes a perpetual issue in our lives because experiencing pleasure just makes us want to experience more pleasure. Then, we feel entitled. You guys know that word. And we feel entitled to have pleasure all the time, and it’s immediately available in so many ways. There is so much value, bro, to eating less food, to drinking less alcohol, to having less stuff.

But when you talk to people about less, all they seem to want is more. Have you considered the possibility that life could be better if you didn’t have any of those false pleasures? I mean, think about that. What happens if you give it all up? When are we willing, if ever, to give up a false pleasure? Giving them up makes us more available to experience the real pleasures in life.

Constraining our drinking makes us more alert and available. Constraining our spending gives us more money for the things that are really important. It gives us freedom. The question becomes when we start to constrain, what is left? What remains when we stop buffering? Imagine the world as it is.

Now, what would the world be like if we didn’t ever – and I’m saying ever – you didn’t ever overdrink, you didn’t ever overeat, you didn’t ever overspend, you didn’t ever overwork, you didn’t ever over-people-please, you didn’t ever over-Facebook or social media. What would your world be like if you didn’t seek the false pleasures and just went for a true, honest, authentic life?

Now, are you willing to live without any brain substance manipulation? Without any false pleasures, without any pretend emotions? Can you live that way in your alpha state? What if we could purchase happiness? What if that were possible? Most companies, I would say, including Coca Cola, imagine Coca Cola. They will tell you that you can. They’ll tell you that they have happiness in a can.

Do you really feel happier or have our brains been tricked into thinking that we’ve experienced something wonderful? Do you really want to put together a bunch of false pleasures and then call that happiness? Or do we want to remove all those things that create a barrier in our lives to really getting and having what we want? We remove all those things and we find a way to be happy getting the things that we want and removing all the false pleasures. Is that possible?

When we remove those things, you’ve likely gone through withdrawal. If you’ve ever taken away a buffer and gotten it taken out of your life, you go through withdrawal. You probably felt deprived, left with all the emotions that you’ve been unwilling to feel. But life is a hard battle. Why don’t we just buffer all the way through life? Just buffer all the way so we can make it all the way to the end.

We can eat as much as we want, drink as much as we want, have as much sex as we want, go into debt, buy everything we want. If we could have all those pleasures with no consequences, nobody would care, but there are consequences. Every action has a consequence, has a result. Buffering does cause pain. Buffers only provide temporary release from negative emotion. That’s why we do it. We do it to avoid the negative emotion.

So buffers only provide that temporary release from negative emotion, which always comes back harder than it started. If you avoid an emotion, it’s coming back. When you go out and buy yourself a brand-new car you can’t afford, you have that one rush of pleasure and then you have the payment to deal with.

There’s that net negative. You get that one hit of pleasure and then you got this car that you got payments to deal with for a long, long time. After that pleasure’s long and over. When you overeat, you gain weight and you might even feel sick afterwards. There’s an equal opposite consequence that keeps it from being worth it, even though we tell ourselves it is worth it before going in.

That’s why eating is a buffer. It’s like, it’s worth it, it’s worth it, it’s worth it, and then we end up gaining weight. It’s not worth it. It’s that net negative. We get that momentary false pleasure and then have to deal with obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol.

On the other side of that, when you take away all those buffers and pursue wellbeing, you come out on the other side feeling so much better. In fact, when you allow yourself to really feel your emotions, you get to know yourself in a much deeper way. When you get to know yourself in a much deeper way, that alpha state, you start finding the causes of your unhappiness, and then you can start to change it because you know what they are, bro.

The causes of your unhappiness is your thoughts. It’s your beta condition. But when you’re avoiding that by going and buffering, by avoiding paying attention to your beta condition and finding those thoughts, you just stay there. You stay in that constant false pleasure rumination. This is sustainable. When you live in a world full of true happiness, where you’re providing happiness cognitively, not through false pleasures but through your own cognition, being the alpha, the master of your mind, this is sustainable, unlike the false pleasures that’s an external pleasure.

When you limit your drinking, you don’t experience hangovers. When you watch your eating, you get the pleasure of not worrying about your weight. When you stop watching pornography, you start to have real intimate connections with women again. These results are real pleasure and it’s ongoing and it gets better and better and better.

Now, natural pleasures are the kind we’re meant to experience in our lives. The pleasure we’re meant to get from food is the pleasure of eating a regular meal for fuel. We’re supposed to eat and we’re supposed to get the dopamine hit from that because our bodies want to tell us to eat. That’s how we survive. Eating healthy is a constant, steady stream of wellness that you get to experience over and over.

But when you give up the buffers, you’ll still get upset, but you’ll be able to deal with it differently. When you get into that negative emotion, instead of going out and buffering, whatever that is, you’re not going to head for the ice cream or the pornography or the alcohol, instead, you’ll elevate your alpha. You’ll be able to deal with the negative emotion.

You’ll be able to deal with that upsetness, whatever it is, frustration and anger by using the model. By examining why you’re upset, by looking at your cognition. And eventually, you won’t even want whatever that was, that ice cream, that porn, that alcohol, because the pleasure we get from food actually diminishes, while the pleasure we get from taking care of ourselves and elevating the alpha state, by being the best man that we are is what fuels ourselves and increases our fuel.

When you trade the false pleasure in your life for wellbeing, you gain confidence, bro, and that confidence begets more confidence, which begets more confidence, which begets more confidence. The more confidence you have, the more empowered you feel. The more wellbeing you have. And the more you get to give and offer to the world. That’s the point because we’re at our ultimate happiness when we’re able to be the best versions of ourselves in contributing and creating for the world.

When we’re in our pleasure-seeking mode, when we’re in our buffering mode, we can’t give to anybody because we’re in a taking mode. We get into a take, take, take, take, take mode. I want to eat, I want to drink, I want to buy. We’re caught in a false desire tailspin that we can never really satisfy. You can’t get enough of something that you don’t really want.

Let me just tell this to you honestly, brother. You don’t really want your buffer. You just are trying to escape the negative emotion. You don’t want the alcohol. I’m telling you. You may think you want to drink. You don’t want to drink. You just don’t want to feel whatever it is you’re feeling. Maybe you say I’m just going to have a couple of drinks to go to the bar, then I’m going to drink a couple more to give up my courage to talk to people.

Yeah, so you’re not drinking because you want to drink. You’re drinking because of the thoughts that you have that are creating self-doubt. That’s the thing. You can’t get enough of something you don’t really want. It’s not the alcohol. It’s not the food. It’s not the pornography. It’s not the drugs. What you want is to not feel the negative emotion. You’re trying to escape your own cognition.

Imagine your life without the thing you use to buffer. Take a second and just imagine your life without it. Whatever it is. We all differ. For me, I used to buffer with sleep, pornography, and marijuana. I used to smoke weed, I used to watch pornography, and I used to take a lot of naps. I used to sleep for 10 hours a day and then take a two-hour nap.

I used to sleep half my life. 12 hours a day. Think about that. When I would think about my life before and I say well, what would happen if I took away all the pornography, what would happen if I took away all the marijuana, if I stopped smoking weed, what would happen if I woke up at my alarm, went to bed at a certain time and not slept during the day? What would happen?

I started to feel fear because these things you depend on. They actually become like a part of your life where you’re like, oh, when I want to feel good, I do this or I do that. So when you think about your life without them, all of a sudden, the fear comes in. The deprivation comes in because you believe that you can’t survive without it.

I believed I couldn’t survive without it, but let me tell you something, brother. You can. I do. I don’t buffer anymore and I’m not saying that to you to brag. I’m saying that to you because I know it’s possible for you. You can survive without whatever it is you’re buffering with right now. Your life without it isn’t just tolerable. It’s actually way better.

And I’m telling you this because I know. Whatever it is you’re buffering, your life would be better without it. Imagine never having it again, whether it’s cake, M&Ms, or coffee, or pornography, or alcohol, whatever it is, imagine never having it again. Whatever is causing you a negative consequence in your life.

Now, what do you feel? You might feel a little bit of withdrawal. You might feel a little bit of deprivation. Ultimately, you’re going to feel the emotions you’re trying so desperately to escape. That emotion has some important information for you. It’s telling you what you’re thinking. It’s telling you what you’re believing. It’s telling you how you’re going to act and show up in the world.

If you’re constantly trying to avoid yourself, brother, you’re missing the authenticity of your life. You see, for me when I stopped buffering, I started to feel shame and guilt over some thoughts that I had about my past, and it was only when I came to those thoughts and I faced those thoughts and I rewrote my past, that is when I became my real self and not the buffered, false pleasure person that was trying to avoid who I really was, to avoid the authenticity of who I really was.

And when you live in an authentic way, you get to offer the world your authenticity. Let me tell you something guys, I would not be doing this podcast, I would not be the alpha male coach if I was still buffering the way I used to. I just wouldn’t be able to do it. I wouldn’t be authentic. I wouldn’t be able to get on this computer and talk to you guys because I was full of shame. I was full of doubt, I was full of guilt. I wasn’t my best version.

But now I’m able to offer the world my authenticity, and when you stop buffering, you get to offer the world your best self. It’s ultimately what will give you the most confidence, the most confidence to go out there and show up, to fail, and not have to pad yourself with buffers. Imagine your life without it. Think about what you’re so afraid of. What is the feeling that you’re so afraid to feel?

I once had a student say if I can give up all my buffers and I can get to my goal weight – this was a while ago when I was doing fitness – get to my goal weight, not drink and experience emotion, do my thought work and all of this, then what would I be capable of? This is what really scares me. It was almost like this fear of success.

And for most of us, it’s not that we’re afraid to make ourselves available to the world. It’s not that we’re afraid of showing up and being who we genuinely are. It’s just that we don’t know what that looks like, or we don’t know how. I don’t know who I am, I don’t know what this authenticity means. You tell me to be myself and I don’t know what you’re talking about.

We don’t know how to feel all the emotions that are part of living an authentic life because we basically feel this entitlement to feeling good all the time. Check this out. How about this? Let me put it this way. You have two options. Either option number one, you believe that you should be happy all the time and when you start to feel not happy, you go and you just buffer to try to stay on that side, to try to stay happy all the time.

Or option number two, you recognize that half of your life is going to be and ought to be negative emotion that should be listened to and used to manage yourself emotionally and cognitively as an alpha male. Because option number one just isn’t true. It’s just entitlement. We’re not entitled to be happy, to feel good 100% of the time.

Our human experience is an experience of light, dark, better, worse, positive, negative, which includes emotion. Your emotions are an indicator of what’s going on for you. To be authentic, to have a true relationship with your life or anyone else is you have to be willing to experience negative emotion 50% of the time. That’s just it. That’s just the way it is.

And if you’re willing to do that without buffering, without escaping, you’ll be able to remove all the buffers in your life and at the same time, you’ll remove all the negative consequences that come with them. What do I mean by negative consequences? Look, if you’re an overeater, you’ll get to your ideal weight. You have the pleasure of being able to put on anything in your closet. You can take your t-shirt off at the beach. Everything’s going to fit.

If you quit drinking, you’ll be able to stop experiencing hangovers and embarrassing drinking moments. I know I had a lot of those, some of my most embarrassing moments are when I was drinking. If you give up the clutter and the over-buying, you’ll only buy things that you genuinely love. If you give up the pornography, you’ll start to have a real connection with people again and women.

You’ll stop looking at women as pornographic objects and start looking at them as real people, to be curious and interested in. Give up the false pleasure so that you can enjoy the full pleasure of wellbeing. It’s the best feeling in the world. You cannot shake the confidence of someone who has given up their buffers. I guarantee it. You cannot shake it. The confidence is indomitable.

So go out there, practice not buffering, and see who you really are. Just see who you really are without it. Now, when you stop buffering, you’re not just going to feel immediately great. Alright brother, I want you to know that. Buffering is what we do to avoid emotional pain. So it makes sense that when you stop buffering, you’re going to feel pain.

And I say that with all the love that I have for you because I know you can handle it. I know you can handle what comes up for you because it’s emotional pain and you can handle emotional pain. Let yourself have that emotional pain so that you can heal, get through it, and you can become your alpha. You can be the alpha male that you are.

See, most of us don’t understand this. That’s what makes it impossible to stop buffering. We don’t want to feel the pain. We say well, I don’t want to go through any hardship, I don’t want to feel any pain, so I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing. I don’t want to go through this misery, this withdrawal, this deprivation.

Think about it like this. It’s like walking into a house. I’ve used this analogy before. You might recognize it. It’s like walking into a house and you turn on the lights. The house is a mess. I’m talking like, a real mess. Like this is a squatter’s house. This isn’t your house. This is a squatter’s house. This is a house that you bought sight unseen and you come to find out that it’s like – it’s dilapidated. It’s just totally torn apart. It’s a mess.

The obvious and easiest answer is to turn the lights back off, which is to buffer, so the mess will go away. Turn the lights back off, leave, don’t look at it. Out of sight, out of mind. But the mess doesn’t go away, bro. You just can’t see it. The lights are just off, and it’s the same with emotions. Avoiding emotion doesn’t make the emotion go away. It just helps us not to feel it or not to see it.

We pretend it isn’t there, but it is there, and it’s there for a reason. All emotions have a cause. We need to stop buffering and turn those lights on. Whatever the cause, whatever the reason you started buffering, there was emotion that you were trying to avoid and that emotion was telling you something. That room, we turn the light on and we got to look in that room. We got to clean up that room and find out what that emotion is trying to tell you.

Because our next job is to remember that yes, the mess seems overwhelming, but we can handle it. We can clean it up. We can turn the lights on and keep them on because turning the lights out makes it impossible to clean when we can’t see. Going unconscious through buffering has the exact same effect.

When we have a negative emotion and we go into buffering, we just let our beta condition run the show because rather than stepping up and elevating our alpha and looking at that cognition and looking at that emotion and deciphering what it’s trying to tell us, we just run beta. We just run away from it like a beta and we run right into our buffer, whatever that buffer is.

When you stop buffering, you will experience temporary pain. The pain is not caused by the lack of buffering. It’s not because you’re removing the buffer. You need to unbuffer yourself long enough to find the cause of the pain. What is the mess that needs to be cleaned up in your mind? Why is buffering even necessary for you at all?

When you stop buffering, you start living the truth of your life. You start seeing exactly what’s going on in your mind and in your emotions and in your actions. You become the master of your cognition and the owner of your emotions. When you stay conscious, you can evaluate these patterns in a way that motivates change, that motivates the elevation of your alpha, that motivates you being the very best version, the true version of who you are.

You don’t have a life, bro, where you have to keep turning the lights off. You want a life where you are proud to keep the lights on. And that’s what I got for you today, brother. Buffering today, it’s a big one, I know. If you have any questions about this, go to my website. Sign up for a free 45-minute consultation.

We can talk about buffering. Everybody’s got them, I know it, and they all have net negatives in our lives. Until next week my friends, my brother, go out there. Stop buffering. Show up as your best in this world and elevate your alpha.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Alpha Male Coach Podcast. If you enjoy what you’ve heard and want even more, sign up for Unleash Your Alpha – your guide to shifting to the alpha mindset – at thealphamalecoach