In this episode, Rob and I dive into the world of positive thinking—what it is, why it matters, and most importantly, how you can harness its power to transform your life for the better.
If you've ever found yourself feeling stuck in negative thought patterns or wanting to attract more positivity and abundance into your life, this episode is for you. Our goal today is to help you understand the immense benefits of positive thinking and equip you with practical strategies to foster a more optimistic mindset.
www.mentalwealthpod.com
www.pedalmyway.com
DISCLAIMER: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speaker’s own and do not constitute legal, medical, or other forms of professional advice. The material and information presented here is for general information and entertainment purposes only. The "Mental Wealth Podcast" and "Pedal My Way" names and all forms and abbreviations are the property of its owner and its use does not imply endorsement of or opposition to any specific organization, product, or service.
If you've ever found yourself feeling stuck in negative thought patterns or wanting to attract more positivity and abundance into your life, this episode is for you. Our goal today is to help you understand the immense benefits of positive thinking and equip you with practical strategies to foster a more optimistic mindset.
www.mentalwealthpod.com
www.pedalmyway.com
DISCLAIMER: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speaker’s own and do not constitute legal, medical, or other forms of professional advice. The material and information presented here is for general information and entertainment purposes only. The "Mental Wealth Podcast" and "Pedal My Way" names and all forms and abbreviations are the property of its owner and its use does not imply endorsement of or opposition to any specific organization, product, or service.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to Pedle my Way podcast, where we
talk about anything related to cycling and fitness. I'm your
host mc MURRALI. If you're a fan of the show,
please remember to subscribe to this podcast and follow the
website Pedlemanway dot com. Also follow at pedal my Way
on Instagram to let me know of your cycling and
(00:25):
fitness goals. Hi, Rob, staying positive. I think staying positive
leads to success. Do you agree with that.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
One hundred percent? Have you had experience to this, Yeah,
So I think there's a great connection between positive action
and reward in terms of day to day life, sporting success,
and fitness, and you know, that's sort of the intersection
that we're sort of talking about here on pad of
by Way. So I thought, why don't we talk about
(00:54):
what positive actions we can take on a day to
day basis, on an incremental basis that would have have
an impact over the long term. And this is something
that I've been thinking about personally for a while, and
I'm sure there are certain steps that you take yourself
to get to where you need to be and to
stay positive on a day to day basis, and so
(01:16):
I thought it'd be a great point of conversation for us.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
I love it because I think I think positive tied
to the overall theme of mental health how to stay
motivated to find happiness that we have talked about in
the past few episodes. Taking it a step further, what
is positive thinking? According to you?
Speaker 2 (01:34):
It's a great question for me. Positive thinking is the
idea of knowing what makes me happy and knowing what
kind of beneficial influence I can have on both myself
and the world around me. So what good things are happening?
And how can I make more good things happen. That's
(01:54):
a very simplistic way of saying it, but I think
that's what I think about when I think of positive thinking.
It's earning a good thought, Oh I want to help
this person, Oh I want to plant to garden, and
then turning that into action.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Verys And what steps do you take to have those thoughts?
Is it something you proactively think or only think about
when you have like s hard situations.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Yeah, it's something that I try to do on a
regular basis. I know a lot of people have you know,
people do meditation, people do positive reinforcement affirmations on a
day to day basis. I know people have these sort
of I don't want to say tricks, but source of
they have these devices that they use to sort of
(02:39):
stay on and even keel and to stay happy and
outwardly positive, and inwardly positive too. It's probably more important
to be inwardly positive as well. What I try to
do for myself is, let's start with the beginning of
the day. When I wake up, unless I've had my
caffeine already, I'm not happy when I wake up. I'm
(03:00):
usually immediately I'm like, Okay, what do I have to do?
I'm thinking. I mean, I'm in action mode when I
wake up. What do I have to do today? What's
the next next step? I'm very sort of step oriented
immediately when I open my eyes. What is the next
thing I have to do? And so when I get
into this mindset of too involved in the task, the work,
(03:22):
or whatever the next step is, I try to remember
that it's not just about myself and this task. It's
not whether I complete this task or not is not
going to make or break the world around me. There
are other things happening in the world around me that
are outside of my circle of influence, and there are
things that are far more important than whether I I
(03:45):
don't know whether I get back to my colleague on
slack about the meeting that we're about to have, or
whether I finish up this big project right on time
or whether it is finished the next day. You know,
these things are important on a business perspective, on a
day to day sort of personal you know, committing to
(04:07):
your deadlines and things like that is obviously very important.
But I try to separate those things from my positivity.
My actions that I try to stay positive are focused
on myself and understanding that my ego and my productivity
is not connected to my worth as a person. It's
sort of a big concept, I guess, but it's one
(04:28):
of those things where I think sometimes you get involved
in did I do a good job on this thing?
And then if you didn't do a good job or also,
or you know, you get criticism from a colleague or
a client or whatever happens at work, or you know,
you have a negative experience where you're out shopping or something.
(04:50):
You can take that as a slight on your ego
and it can affect your positive mindset, right, It can
affect you before these negative things happen. I try to
go like, is this the end of the world if
this thing happens or doesn't happen.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
No, it isn't.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Okay, What thing can I do right now to remember
that I am still on the right track? Well, what
recent successes have I had for me? My work is
a big part of how I feel positive about myself
and my abilities or I don't know what you would
call that, but my forward momentum in life is very
(05:27):
much tied to my success at work. So I think
of like, Okay, maybe something went wrong at work today,
but five other things went well last week, five other
ten other things went well the previous month. What went
well in those times and what is not going well now?
And what are the differences there? And what can you
(05:48):
do to focus more on those positive things rather than
the things that are going wrong now? Because the thing's
going wrong now, it might just be that you've followed
the same process. It's just a different result. And that
can happen in any business, in any industry. This is
purely talking about work, obviously, but it now that I've
(06:10):
talked for myself a little bit, is there anything you
do in your day to day life that you can
think of right now? McCunn. That keeps you on a
positive track every day.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Of course, definitely going back a steparate, like what is
positive thinking? My take on positive thinking is that in
any situation, you have an option to do it right now,
and everybody wants that action to succeed, and for me
to help myself to succeed in that action is to
visualize what success in that activity looks like. For example,
(06:43):
you are in a customer facing role at work. I'm
at a customer facing role at work. My success is
good feedback from the customer, customer buys from me, and
overall increasing business for myself. But what will make it happen? Well,
what will not make it happen is having a negative
view of the customer, always being pessimistic of what you do,
(07:07):
not paying attention to the process, looking everything in a
negative way. That is not going to help Positivity is
making sure that I see success. I visualize it, what
success means to me in that particular situation and what
would make that work. I know it's much harder to
(07:28):
describe it, but what I do is you know when
you ask for what steps I do is when I'm
trying to come up with a solution, to a problem,
I try to visualize what the end result is going
to be. For the end result to be whatever it is,
I need to break it down into individual parts, and
each of those individual parts has to have its own
(07:50):
next step, right, So each of those steps includes critical
thinking and positivity in terms of believing that that is
going to succeed. There's always an option of not working
some things is not in your hands. But as long
as you can control the outcome of that particular smaller task,
(08:11):
I think the bigger task succeeding is much.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Yeah, one, one hundred percent. You're absolutely right in terms
of breaking out in terms of the micro tasks and
then looking at it from a micro point of view
and then building it out because that that you're absolutely
right in terms of the positivity is not something that
comes out of that short term thinking. You have to
(08:38):
go what is this next step? What was the last
step I took? And why now do I have a
negative point of view? And often if you if you
look at it from a micro point of view like
you're talking about, you can sort of see that sort
of connective tissue, right, You can sort of see that
connective tissue between where was I when I was happy,
and why am I not that same person?
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Exactly? What you what do you bring about in terms
of seeing past successes and what has what has made
them success? That helps a lot. Another example is if
you're going for an interview, you can go in hopeful
that it's going to work well. You can go in
pessimistically like hey, what if I do I don't get
(09:23):
the job, or you can go in with a positive
feeling saying that you know, hey I did this, I
did the customer. I mean, you know, I did more
more research on the client, being honest with the client
in terms of capabilities, or rather the interviewer, you know,
having the positive mindset, as you know it's people at
(09:43):
the other end of the table that you're talking to.
I know these might all sound cliche, but this has
helped me. So what helps that situation? According to you,
what outcome you would want from the situation. It all
depends on not having a negative mindset. I will not
say not having an Egado mindset as a positive mindset,
(10:04):
but you at least take away the negative withinports the
energy out of the evation and going in with what
you can humanly possible, so you cannot kind of going
with unrealistic expectations, but being positive in what you can
at least give to the situation. Again, this is all
kind of my experience, and it might not be easily transferable,
(10:29):
so that's why I'm trying to be very cautious. An example,
psychic because not everybody comes from the same state or
a state, or the same situation. But any situation you
have right, you can say, ignoring the pessimistic aspect of it,
the negative aspects of it, what is positive that you
think can come out of it. You can apply. Anything
can have positive and negative So it all depends on
(10:52):
focusing on the positive parts of things, focusing on what
you can control, breaking it down into individual com just
so that it's more manageable for you.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Another another thing I thought about what I've done in
terms of myself when I noticed there was a small
time last year where I noticed that I was getting
sort of more anxious outside of work, when I noticed
that I was getting emails, And a small thing I
did to sort of trick my brain is to change
the sound of the notification on my phone when I
(11:26):
got an email, so that my brain was no longer
associating that negative thing with that sound, and it might
be it might seem silly, but even small things like that,
like changing notification sounds on your phone if you're anxious
about work or you have a negative experience at work.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Or even just.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Changing how you communicate with people at work. And that's
a bigger process obviously, but small things like changing notification sounds,
thinking about how you what, what triggers that negative reaction,
what triggers a negative experience and why, And it's really
(12:05):
all about controlling the original negative thought in your brain
because often I for at least for myself, is once
I have that first negative thought, it's very then becomes
way more difficult, It becomes sort of waves right, becomes
very much more difficult to sort of control further negative
thoughts after that. So, yes, I was just thinking about
a tangible step that most of us could do is
(12:26):
sort of think about what that trigger is for the
negative thoughts and then sort of think about steps we
can take to avoid that trigger or minimize the impact
of that trick.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
And even when you think about something that causes anxiety,
breaking down into individual parts, what part of it that
is anxious? For example, in your situation when you hear
the sound of the phone ringing or notification. Is it
the notification part of it. Maybe you have as a
punch association for the sound itself and nothing to do
(13:03):
with the message that you're getting, Or maybe it's a
message itself you know from somebody that you're not looking
forward to getting the message. If that's the case, what
is that that is bothering you? People tend to generalize problems,
but once they break it down, it gets much easier
to manage. So breaking it down has helped me personally
(13:26):
in terms of reducing anxiety and have a positive mindset
going into anything.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
One hundred percent. What we're talking about is sort of
understanding what's what's triggering that negativity to again with what
is the what is the source of the anger or
sadness or anxiety, whatever that negative emotion is that it
preventing you from being happy and positive on a day
to day basis, What is the trigger behind those negative
(13:54):
feelings and exploring ways to sort of get ahead of
those things. Obviously, it depends on the individual and the
challenge they're experiencing. Alerts on you on my phone was
one example where it's sort of a trick of the
brain where we are being alerted to something that maybe
should not be that priority level in our heads. You know,
(14:17):
like a text message, sound on our phone, or a
phone call, a ring tone should not have the same
alert level, the same sort of priority level as an emergency.
But sometimes I think what happens is our brain starts
associating those sounds with the highest alert level possible in
(14:40):
our heads. Right, So you get a message from a
friend or something like that, all of a sudden, all
your senses are heightened, and you know, you respond in
a way that we would do if there was if
we were still in nature, if there was a threat, right,
And that it's sort of I think, partly for myself
at least, any sort of negative thing is to do
(15:01):
with avoiding, not necessarily avoiding, but changing the stimula, changing
the the things that are having that negative emotion to
begin with, and sort of understanding that not everything is
going to go wrong if you get a message or
whatever it is that is causing the negative reaction.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
That is a very good point. Yes, I agree with
that as well. Having the association and what it is
of that association that is giving you the anxiety, that's
a that's a very valid point. Positivity has a lot
of points in terms of expectations in certain the outlook,
in terms of your overall experience with that particular situation,
(15:42):
that kind of that kind of gives you an intrinsic
positive attitude to address that situation. Right, So, what has
been something that has not been positive from the get
go and how have you kind of managed to learn.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
In a previous job that I had, I had quite
a difficult client that I didn't really enjoy working with.
The problem that I had was I really wanted to Originally,
what I thought I wanted from the situation was to
not have this client anymore. I thought it'd be way
easier if I just didn't work with them anymore. And
(16:17):
because I felt like their expectations were far beyond not
just what I was capable of, but also what anybody
would be capable of given the resources available and the
time constraints and all those kind of things. And so
I felt like this was becoming difficult, and I didn't
know how quite how to address this with the client,
and so it was starting to affect me. It was
(16:38):
starting to affect my day to day life, even aside
from working on their projects. So what I did was
I scheduled a meeting with someone that works at the company,
some one that wasn't the client directly, It was someone
that works for the client, and I said, what are
the objectives? What are we trying to do here? You know,
(17:00):
you set these particular priorities for me right now that
I didn't outwardly say I don't think it's possible, but
I said, let's break it down into stages and look
at what's realistic given this time frame. And they said,
you know, this other person that works at the same
company with the difficult client that I had, was able
(17:22):
to sort of break down the steps that we had
to take to reach the goals that my client had.
And so what we did is we broke down each
step and looked at it from a month to month basis.
And it wasn't that it was really a misunderstanding of
what I thought my client wanted. They were quite difficult
to speak to, to be honest, they were quite difficult
(17:43):
in their communication style. They weren't very open and forthcoming
with information, But what they actually wanted would have been
realistic had they explained the time frame to begin with.
So I went sort of with the the client's approval,
went to one of the people that works with them
and said, what is it that you're trying to accomplish
(18:05):
as a company, How do we do this? This is
what the time is, these are my resources. How do
we get this done? And then this other person was
able to sort of break it down and we were
able to accomplish the goal for the client, but we
did it in a way where we did it step
by step rather than trying to do all the steps
within a certain period of time. So we were able
(18:26):
to accomplish the goal through communication, which really helped us
sort of overcome which I thought was what I thought
was a roadblock in the communication style between myself and
the client.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
So you went back and you tried to get answers
to questions that was bothering you, and that removed the
negative feeling you had about the top.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Yeah, it's sort of generally, it's most people's major sources
of negativity come from not being truthful with someone else
or themselves about what they can accomplish. Could easily have
been that I might have oversold my ability to work
on this project to the client themselves, but I felt
like at the time I was being overworked and becoming
(19:13):
very difficult to work on this project, and it just
started affecting a lot of different parts of my day
to day life. You can resolve a conflict without always
confronting and addressing the major source of consternation or difficulty
within that problem. Especially when it's a large company. You
can go to a different person with a different personality
(19:34):
and say, look, this is the thing, this is the problem.
They will say, this is where we want to be,
and I sort of was able to break down the
steps for them, what is the next step that you
want to accomplish, and then we moved to that step
and we broke it down into I think it was
in fifteen stages or something like that in the project
in the end, where before it was just one stage
(19:55):
and it became overwhelming. So my solution to the problem
was I went to the source of that unhappiness the
company themselves. I didn't necessarily address it with the original client,
but I addressed it with one of their employees and said,
what's going on? What do we need to accomplish? And
then it allowed me to sort of filter my negative
(20:16):
emotions and sort of go, okay, I can do this now.
I can do this next step, I can do the
step after that. Once we've done the first step. It's
really a step by step process that we can accomplish things.
And I was actually far more positive than I was
with other projects after that because it just everything was
(20:37):
moving towards the same goal.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
The client was.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Happy, I was happy, and you know, they saw the
progress we were making and I was able to sort
of connect that progress from step to step. So it
really it was really beneficial with that relationship process.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Very nice. I'm glad it booked out. So as a
concluding or rather like a catch all, what I gathered
from both our collective experiences that breaking it down into
individual components helps because that gives you more transparency and
more insights into the problem itself, number one. Number two
(21:13):
is trying to investigate the individual steps itself to see
if there are any roadblocks in those individual steps so
that that can help to a better outcome for the
bigger project or bigger you know what you're working on.
And number three is going in with the negative, pessimistic
attitude does not help at all because that prevents you
(21:36):
from investigating it further with the hopes of compling it
to satisfaction.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
I think that's about right. It's it's the process understanding
yourself and understanding the problem that the keys to this
For me, at least, the keys to this issue, this
is the key to staying positive for me has always
been what is instigating this feeling? Well, it's triggering this
feel like? How do I address it? And to whom
(22:02):
do I address these feelings? And although it's going to
vary from individual individual to individual, I do believe that
there is always an original source of this negativity. And
I do believe that there is a way to overcome
or at least address these feelings to become a slightly
more positive and slightly happier on a day to day
(22:25):
basis excellent.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
There's been a very interesting conversation Rob. What I shared,
I learned it myself. Anybody and everybody has faced a
situation that seems unsurmountable. I knew that that is not
how it's supposed to work. There should be a solution
to most other problems that based I discovered this were
breaking down into individual components works. And it looks like
(22:47):
you also did that, and people are kind of generally
doing that. But for those really stuck in some situation
this has worked, so please give it a try. Anything
else you like to add, roup just.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Like to really point out that it's It's something we've
mentioned on a few podcasts, but small things can make
a huge difference on a day to day basis. As
I was saying with my example of just changing the
ringtone on my phone, try different things, Be open to
trying different things, Be open to trying changing things, and
understanding that you have not only a certain level of power,
(23:24):
but a certain level of responsibility for how you feel
and you can address those feelings, and working with your
social group, as we've taught before, is a great way
to do that as well.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Excellent sounds, good job. Once again, it's been great talking
to you on this crucial topic and till next time
you have a good one.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
YouTube can great speaking with you me
Hello, and welcome to Pedle my Way podcast, where we
talk about anything related to cycling and fitness. I'm your
host mc MURRALI. If you're a fan of the show,
please remember to subscribe to this podcast and follow the
website Pedlemanway dot com. Also follow at pedal my Way
on Instagram to let me know of your cycling and
(00:25):
fitness goals. Hi, Rob, staying positive. I think staying positive
leads to success. Do you agree with that.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
One hundred percent? Have you had experience to this, Yeah,
So I think there's a great connection between positive action
and reward in terms of day to day life, sporting success,
and fitness, and you know, that's sort of the intersection
that we're sort of talking about here on pad of
by Way. So I thought, why don't we talk about
(00:54):
what positive actions we can take on a day to
day basis, on an incremental basis that would have have
an impact over the long term. And this is something
that I've been thinking about personally for a while, and
I'm sure there are certain steps that you take yourself
to get to where you need to be and to
stay positive on a day to day basis, and so
(01:16):
I thought it'd be a great point of conversation for us.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
I love it because I think I think positive tied
to the overall theme of mental health how to stay
motivated to find happiness that we have talked about in
the past few episodes. Taking it a step further, what
is positive thinking? According to you?
Speaker 2 (01:34):
It's a great question for me. Positive thinking is the
idea of knowing what makes me happy and knowing what
kind of beneficial influence I can have on both myself
and the world around me. So what good things are happening?
And how can I make more good things happen. That's
(01:54):
a very simplistic way of saying it, but I think
that's what I think about when I think of positive thinking.
It's earning a good thought, Oh I want to help
this person, Oh I want to plant to garden, and
then turning that into action.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Verys And what steps do you take to have those thoughts?
Is it something you proactively think or only think about
when you have like s hard situations.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Yeah, it's something that I try to do on a
regular basis. I know a lot of people have you know,
people do meditation, people do positive reinforcement affirmations on a
day to day basis. I know people have these sort
of I don't want to say tricks, but source of
they have these devices that they use to sort of
(02:39):
stay on and even keel and to stay happy and
outwardly positive, and inwardly positive too. It's probably more important
to be inwardly positive as well. What I try to
do for myself is, let's start with the beginning of
the day. When I wake up, unless I've had my
caffeine already, I'm not happy when I wake up. I'm
(03:00):
usually immediately I'm like, Okay, what do I have to do?
I'm thinking. I mean, I'm in action mode when I
wake up. What do I have to do today? What's
the next next step? I'm very sort of step oriented
immediately when I open my eyes. What is the next
thing I have to do? And so when I get
into this mindset of too involved in the task, the work,
(03:22):
or whatever the next step is, I try to remember
that it's not just about myself and this task. It's
not whether I complete this task or not is not
going to make or break the world around me. There
are other things happening in the world around me that
are outside of my circle of influence, and there are
things that are far more important than whether I I
(03:45):
don't know whether I get back to my colleague on
slack about the meeting that we're about to have, or
whether I finish up this big project right on time
or whether it is finished the next day. You know,
these things are important on a business perspective, on a
day to day sort of personal you know, committing to
(04:07):
your deadlines and things like that is obviously very important.
But I try to separate those things from my positivity.
My actions that I try to stay positive are focused
on myself and understanding that my ego and my productivity
is not connected to my worth as a person. It's
sort of a big concept, I guess, but it's one
(04:28):
of those things where I think sometimes you get involved
in did I do a good job on this thing?
And then if you didn't do a good job or also,
or you know, you get criticism from a colleague or
a client or whatever happens at work, or you know,
you have a negative experience where you're out shopping or something.
(04:50):
You can take that as a slight on your ego
and it can affect your positive mindset, right, It can
affect you before these negative things happen. I try to
go like, is this the end of the world if
this thing happens or doesn't happen.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
No, it isn't.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Okay, What thing can I do right now to remember
that I am still on the right track? Well, what
recent successes have I had for me? My work is
a big part of how I feel positive about myself
and my abilities or I don't know what you would
call that, but my forward momentum in life is very
(05:27):
much tied to my success at work. So I think
of like, Okay, maybe something went wrong at work today,
but five other things went well last week, five other
ten other things went well the previous month. What went
well in those times and what is not going well now?
And what are the differences there? And what can you
(05:48):
do to focus more on those positive things rather than
the things that are going wrong now? Because the thing's
going wrong now, it might just be that you've followed
the same process. It's just a different result. And that
can happen in any business, in any industry. This is
purely talking about work, obviously, but it now that I've
(06:10):
talked for myself a little bit, is there anything you
do in your day to day life that you can
think of right now? McCunn. That keeps you on a
positive track every day.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Of course, definitely going back a steparate, like what is
positive thinking? My take on positive thinking is that in
any situation, you have an option to do it right now,
and everybody wants that action to succeed, and for me
to help myself to succeed in that action is to
visualize what success in that activity looks like. For example,
(06:43):
you are in a customer facing role at work. I'm
at a customer facing role at work. My success is
good feedback from the customer, customer buys from me, and
overall increasing business for myself. But what will make it happen? Well,
what will not make it happen is having a negative
view of the customer, always being pessimistic of what you do,
(07:07):
not paying attention to the process, looking everything in a
negative way. That is not going to help Positivity is
making sure that I see success. I visualize it, what
success means to me in that particular situation and what
would make that work. I know it's much harder to
(07:28):
describe it, but what I do is you know when
you ask for what steps I do is when I'm
trying to come up with a solution, to a problem,
I try to visualize what the end result is going
to be. For the end result to be whatever it is,
I need to break it down into individual parts, and
each of those individual parts has to have its own
(07:50):
next step, right, So each of those steps includes critical
thinking and positivity in terms of believing that that is
going to succeed. There's always an option of not working
some things is not in your hands. But as long
as you can control the outcome of that particular smaller task,
(08:11):
I think the bigger task succeeding is much.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Yeah, one, one hundred percent. You're absolutely right in terms
of breaking out in terms of the micro tasks and
then looking at it from a micro point of view
and then building it out because that that you're absolutely
right in terms of the positivity is not something that
comes out of that short term thinking. You have to
(08:38):
go what is this next step? What was the last
step I took? And why now do I have a
negative point of view? And often if you if you
look at it from a micro point of view like
you're talking about, you can sort of see that sort
of connective tissue, right, You can sort of see that
connective tissue between where was I when I was happy,
and why am I not that same person?
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Exactly? What you what do you bring about in terms
of seeing past successes and what has what has made
them success? That helps a lot. Another example is if
you're going for an interview, you can go in hopeful
that it's going to work well. You can go in
pessimistically like hey, what if I do I don't get
(09:23):
the job, or you can go in with a positive
feeling saying that you know, hey I did this, I
did the customer. I mean, you know, I did more
more research on the client, being honest with the client
in terms of capabilities, or rather the interviewer, you know,
having the positive mindset, as you know it's people at
(09:43):
the other end of the table that you're talking to.
I know these might all sound cliche, but this has
helped me. So what helps that situation? According to you,
what outcome you would want from the situation. It all
depends on not having a negative mindset. I will not
say not having an Egado mindset as a positive mindset,
(10:04):
but you at least take away the negative withinports the
energy out of the evation and going in with what
you can humanly possible, so you cannot kind of going
with unrealistic expectations, but being positive in what you can
at least give to the situation. Again, this is all
kind of my experience, and it might not be easily transferable,
(10:29):
so that's why I'm trying to be very cautious. An example,
psychic because not everybody comes from the same state or
a state, or the same situation. But any situation you
have right, you can say, ignoring the pessimistic aspect of it,
the negative aspects of it, what is positive that you
think can come out of it. You can apply. Anything
can have positive and negative So it all depends on
(10:52):
focusing on the positive parts of things, focusing on what
you can control, breaking it down into individual com just
so that it's more manageable for you.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Another another thing I thought about what I've done in
terms of myself when I noticed there was a small
time last year where I noticed that I was getting
sort of more anxious outside of work, when I noticed
that I was getting emails, And a small thing I
did to sort of trick my brain is to change
the sound of the notification on my phone when I
(11:26):
got an email, so that my brain was no longer
associating that negative thing with that sound, and it might
be it might seem silly, but even small things like that,
like changing notification sounds on your phone if you're anxious
about work or you have a negative experience at work.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Or even just.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Changing how you communicate with people at work. And that's
a bigger process obviously, but small things like changing notification sounds,
thinking about how you what, what triggers that negative reaction,
what triggers a negative experience and why, And it's really
(12:05):
all about controlling the original negative thought in your brain
because often I for at least for myself, is once
I have that first negative thought, it's very then becomes
way more difficult, It becomes sort of waves right, becomes
very much more difficult to sort of control further negative
thoughts after that. So, yes, I was just thinking about
a tangible step that most of us could do is
(12:26):
sort of think about what that trigger is for the
negative thoughts and then sort of think about steps we
can take to avoid that trigger or minimize the impact
of that trick.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
And even when you think about something that causes anxiety,
breaking down into individual parts, what part of it that
is anxious? For example, in your situation when you hear
the sound of the phone ringing or notification. Is it
the notification part of it. Maybe you have as a
punch association for the sound itself and nothing to do
(13:03):
with the message that you're getting, Or maybe it's a
message itself you know from somebody that you're not looking
forward to getting the message. If that's the case, what
is that that is bothering you? People tend to generalize problems,
but once they break it down, it gets much easier
to manage. So breaking it down has helped me personally
(13:26):
in terms of reducing anxiety and have a positive mindset
going into anything.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
One hundred percent. What we're talking about is sort of
understanding what's what's triggering that negativity to again with what
is the what is the source of the anger or
sadness or anxiety, whatever that negative emotion is that it
preventing you from being happy and positive on a day
to day basis, What is the trigger behind those negative
(13:54):
feelings and exploring ways to sort of get ahead of
those things. Obviously, it depends on the individual and the
challenge they're experiencing. Alerts on you on my phone was
one example where it's sort of a trick of the
brain where we are being alerted to something that maybe
should not be that priority level in our heads. You know,
(14:17):
like a text message, sound on our phone, or a
phone call, a ring tone should not have the same
alert level, the same sort of priority level as an emergency.
But sometimes I think what happens is our brain starts
associating those sounds with the highest alert level possible in
(14:40):
our heads. Right, So you get a message from a
friend or something like that, all of a sudden, all
your senses are heightened, and you know, you respond in
a way that we would do if there was if
we were still in nature, if there was a threat, right,
And that it's sort of I think, partly for myself
at least, any sort of negative thing is to do
(15:01):
with avoiding, not necessarily avoiding, but changing the stimula, changing
the the things that are having that negative emotion to
begin with, and sort of understanding that not everything is
going to go wrong if you get a message or
whatever it is that is causing the negative reaction.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
That is a very good point. Yes, I agree with
that as well. Having the association and what it is
of that association that is giving you the anxiety, that's
a that's a very valid point. Positivity has a lot
of points in terms of expectations in certain the outlook,
in terms of your overall experience with that particular situation,
(15:42):
that kind of that kind of gives you an intrinsic
positive attitude to address that situation. Right, So, what has
been something that has not been positive from the get
go and how have you kind of managed to learn.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
In a previous job that I had, I had quite
a difficult client that I didn't really enjoy working with.
The problem that I had was I really wanted to Originally,
what I thought I wanted from the situation was to
not have this client anymore. I thought it'd be way
easier if I just didn't work with them anymore. And
(16:17):
because I felt like their expectations were far beyond not
just what I was capable of, but also what anybody
would be capable of given the resources available and the
time constraints and all those kind of things. And so
I felt like this was becoming difficult, and I didn't
know how quite how to address this with the client,
and so it was starting to affect me. It was
(16:38):
starting to affect my day to day life, even aside
from working on their projects. So what I did was
I scheduled a meeting with someone that works at the company,
some one that wasn't the client directly, It was someone
that works for the client, and I said, what are
the objectives? What are we trying to do here? You know,
(17:00):
you set these particular priorities for me right now that
I didn't outwardly say I don't think it's possible, but
I said, let's break it down into stages and look
at what's realistic given this time frame. And they said,
you know, this other person that works at the same
company with the difficult client that I had, was able
(17:22):
to sort of break down the steps that we had
to take to reach the goals that my client had.
And so what we did is we broke down each
step and looked at it from a month to month basis.
And it wasn't that it was really a misunderstanding of
what I thought my client wanted. They were quite difficult
to speak to, to be honest, they were quite difficult
(17:43):
in their communication style. They weren't very open and forthcoming
with information, But what they actually wanted would have been
realistic had they explained the time frame to begin with.
So I went sort of with the the client's approval,
went to one of the people that works with them
and said, what is it that you're trying to accomplish
(18:05):
as a company, How do we do this? This is
what the time is, these are my resources. How do
we get this done? And then this other person was
able to sort of break it down and we were
able to accomplish the goal for the client, but we
did it in a way where we did it step
by step rather than trying to do all the steps
within a certain period of time. So we were able
(18:26):
to accomplish the goal through communication, which really helped us
sort of overcome which I thought was what I thought
was a roadblock in the communication style between myself and
the client.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
So you went back and you tried to get answers
to questions that was bothering you, and that removed the
negative feeling you had about the top.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Yeah, it's sort of generally, it's most people's major sources
of negativity come from not being truthful with someone else
or themselves about what they can accomplish. Could easily have
been that I might have oversold my ability to work
on this project to the client themselves, but I felt
like at the time I was being overworked and becoming
(19:13):
very difficult to work on this project, and it just
started affecting a lot of different parts of my day
to day life. You can resolve a conflict without always
confronting and addressing the major source of consternation or difficulty
within that problem. Especially when it's a large company. You
can go to a different person with a different personality
(19:34):
and say, look, this is the thing, this is the problem.
They will say, this is where we want to be,
and I sort of was able to break down the
steps for them, what is the next step that you
want to accomplish, and then we moved to that step
and we broke it down into I think it was
in fifteen stages or something like that in the project
in the end, where before it was just one stage
(19:55):
and it became overwhelming. So my solution to the problem
was I went to the source of that unhappiness the
company themselves. I didn't necessarily address it with the original client,
but I addressed it with one of their employees and said,
what's going on? What do we need to accomplish? And
then it allowed me to sort of filter my negative
(20:16):
emotions and sort of go, okay, I can do this now.
I can do this next step, I can do the
step after that. Once we've done the first step. It's
really a step by step process that we can accomplish things.
And I was actually far more positive than I was
with other projects after that because it just everything was
(20:37):
moving towards the same goal.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
The client was.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Happy, I was happy, and you know, they saw the
progress we were making and I was able to sort
of connect that progress from step to step. So it
really it was really beneficial with that relationship process.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Very nice. I'm glad it booked out. So as a
concluding or rather like a catch all, what I gathered
from both our collective experiences that breaking it down into
individual components helps because that gives you more transparency and
more insights into the problem itself, number one. Number two
(21:13):
is trying to investigate the individual steps itself to see
if there are any roadblocks in those individual steps so
that that can help to a better outcome for the
bigger project or bigger you know what you're working on.
And number three is going in with the negative, pessimistic
attitude does not help at all because that prevents you
(21:36):
from investigating it further with the hopes of compling it
to satisfaction.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
I think that's about right. It's it's the process understanding
yourself and understanding the problem that the keys to this
For me, at least, the keys to this issue, this
is the key to staying positive for me has always
been what is instigating this feeling? Well, it's triggering this
feel like? How do I address it? And to whom
(22:02):
do I address these feelings? And although it's going to
vary from individual individual to individual, I do believe that
there is always an original source of this negativity. And
I do believe that there is a way to overcome
or at least address these feelings to become a slightly
more positive and slightly happier on a day to day
(22:25):
basis excellent.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
There's been a very interesting conversation Rob. What I shared,
I learned it myself. Anybody and everybody has faced a
situation that seems unsurmountable. I knew that that is not
how it's supposed to work. There should be a solution
to most other problems that based I discovered this were
breaking down into individual components works. And it looks like
(22:47):
you also did that, and people are kind of generally
doing that. But for those really stuck in some situation
this has worked, so please give it a try. Anything
else you like to add, roup just.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Like to really point out that it's It's something we've
mentioned on a few podcasts, but small things can make
a huge difference on a day to day basis. As
I was saying with my example of just changing the
ringtone on my phone, try different things, Be open to
trying different things, Be open to trying changing things, and
understanding that you have not only a certain level of power,
(23:24):
but a certain level of responsibility for how you feel
and you can address those feelings, and working with your
social group, as we've taught before, is a great way
to do that as well.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Excellent sounds, good job. Once again, it's been great talking
to you on this crucial topic and till next time
you have a good one.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
YouTube can great speaking with you me
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