The power of positivity is … bullshit.
Have you ever been through a divorce? Or stuck in a job you hated? Or gotten injured or sick?
And, through all of that you’ve got someone telling you to just be positive? ?
I have. And, I wanted to slap them across the face ?♂️
You know what DOES work? Negativity.
Negativity is 4-7x more powerful than positivity.
Another fun fact … if you say something out loud, it’s 10x more powerful than if you think it.
Therefore, saying something negative out loud makes it 40-70x more likely to happen or cause a negative result ?
Rather than forcing yourself to be positive through some challenging times … how about step 1 is just don’t say negative shit out loud.
Don’t complain about the weather. Don’t complain about your circumstances. Don’t complain about your weight.
You don’t need to be positive about those things or avoid thinking about them. Your internal dialogue is all over the place and that’s ok.
Just don’t say negative shit out loud. That’s step 1.
Then the question becomes, how do you get out of the situation you’re in? How do you get a different result?
That’s where behavior enters the equation.
Are you doing the same behaviors and expecting a different result?
The past is not predictive … unless you keep your behavior the same.
I kept falling into the same rinse and repeat diet cycles.
To make matters worse, I would verbalize my inability to be consistent and lose weight.
My behavior stayed the same so my outcome stayed the same.
It wasn’t until I changed my behavior that I changed my future.
Your behavior precedes your success.
There was a great story about one of the most successful magazine entrepreneurs.
In high school, he was struggling. Almost failed out of school. Always skipping class.
He promised his mom he would take the SAT’s so he does, with no real expectations.
He ends up getting a 1480 out of 1600! His mom is so shocked that she assumes he must have cheated.
He even admits to trying to cheat but the way the test is designed, there’s basically no way to cheat.
From that point on, he starts going to class, ends up at a community college, then goes to an ivy league school and eventually becomes one of the most successful magazine entrepreneurs in the world.
So, the story is simply that he had these gifts inside of him that the test unlocked, right?
Not so fast …
12 years after he took the test, he received a letter in the mail from Princeton, NJ.
The SAT board periodically reviews their test taking procedures and policies. As it turns out, he was 1 of 13 people that were sent the wrong score.
His actual score: 740 out of 1600.
“People want to say the 1480 changed my life. But it was ACTING like a 1480 that really changed my life.”
You can change the outcome of your future by acting like the person that you want to become.
The future has not happened yet. Therefore, it’s what you do next that matters most.
