Latest / Pathological Positivity / The Gravity of Negative Thinking – Episode #710
Transcript
- This is Live On Purpose Radio episode 710, the gravity of negative thinking. Now is the only time to create and live the life you love. I'm doctor Paul Jenkins, the positivity psychologist. My job is to connect you to powerful positive psychology principles that immediately upgrade your relationships, business, and mental health. Are you ready? Let's jump in. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Live On Purpose Radio. This is doctor Paul the shrink who expands your life with another episode of Live on Purpose Radio. And today, a surprising topic, the gravity of negative thinking. I am the positivity psychologist, and we're talking about negativity today here on the show. Well, there's a reason for that. Let's talk about the physics behind that first, and then I'm going to get into why negativity can consume positivity, and then we'll wrap up with how we're gonna lighten the load. Does that sound good? Let's jump in. First, the physics, and I'm going to geek out on you a little bit because in Newtonian physics, the second law of thermodynamics is entropy. And all that means is that any system will naturally move toward a more disorganized state unless energy or force or work is intentionally applied. Put a pin in that. We're going to come back to that in just a minute because relationships and psychological and mental health are exactly the same way. So in the law of entropy, if you see a carton of eggs that has been dropped on the floor... And I remember this early in our marriage. We went to a big warehouse store where we bought this large carton of eggs. And our little toddler at the time, we only had one kid at the time, had launched these eggs onto the floor, the concrete floor of this warehouse. So can you picture that? Now you would assume that something happened to those eggs and yes, gravity happened to those eggs. They got pulled very predictably at a predictable rate of acceleration to the concrete floor where they became less organized. Now you would never expect to see eggs organize themselves, replace their shells, hop into the carton, and jump back up into our shopping cart. In fact, if you ever saw that, you would assume that time was moving backwards. So it's the law of entropy that allows us to see that time is moving forward. But there's another physical law, gravity. Do you ever get up in the morning and think, I wonder if gravity's on today? It... It's always on and it predictably pulls on you and everything around you. As long as you reside on this planet, you will experience that and probably any other planet that has any significant mass. So default is down. Gravity naturally pulls things downward. You never hear of someone falling up. You don't have to try to fall down. It just happens. And by the way, gravity gets a little stronger as you get older. I've just noticed that. Just saying. Similarly, our minds tend to drift toward fear, criticism, threat detection, worst case scenarios. This is not because we're broken. It's because our brains have the primary job of keeping us safe and the secondary job of proving us right. Now both of those get in our way all the time. But just notice that it's happening. So when we connect to that, when we understand that default is down, that there are natural forces, and I'm talking laws of physics and laws of the universe that pull on us, that drive us to a lower energetic state, that's good to know. Now here's why this topic came up today. I was listening to another podcast where Price Pritchett, PhD, was the guest on this show. He's... Price is a very prolific author and and leadership trainer and expert on mentality. In fact, I just got a copy of his book, Hard Optimism. And, Price was on this interview and he asked... He posed the question. He said, what's more important, having more positives or fewer negatives? Now I am the positivity psychologist. I wanted the answer to be... I expected the answer to be... Well, more positives, obviously. The surprise? It's negatives. It's more important to have less negatives in our life than to have more positives. Why? Because default is down. And negatives often consume the positives. Check it out. Check this against your experience. You work hard to build up the positives and then you experience a negative and what happens? It just it overwhelms or consumes the positive. Just think about it. You can get 10 compliments and one criticism. Which one sticks with you? One betrayal can overshadow years of trust. I did child custody evaluations for the court for thirteen years of my career. It's amazing how quickly we can destroy something that took years to build. Now, this is true in our psychology. One toxic thought can drain the energy, from an entire day. How... Whether whether that's the way it should be or not, this is what we observe and the research backs this up. The negatives can overwhelm us. Now I've also noticed that we tend to believe the negatives, and this becomes an issue because there's there's a concept called ownership bias. So in addition to the negativity bias because it's always safer to assume risk, danger, bad things happening than it is to assume good things happening. It... It's safer. Now it doesn't mean you're right. Doesn't mean you're more correct. You might be perfectly safe, but it's safer to assume danger and be wrong than it is to assume safety and be wrong. So we have a negativity bias already just because of our brain's job to keep us safe. But then our brain's job is to prove us right, and part of that is what I just mentioned, this ownership bias. And I picked up on this idea from Greg McKeown who wrote the book Essentialism. And Greg was talking about cleaning a closet. And he said when you're cleaning your closet, you you go in there and you you take out an item. And as you're looking at this item, ask yourself this question to overcome the ownership bias. Oh, and by the way, ownership bias is that we artificially value something more if we already own it than if we didn't. And that's why we tend to clutter things up and hoard. Right? And so you take that item and you ask yourself, if I didn't already own this, how much would I be willing to pay to obtain it now? And if the answer is zero or close to that, toss it or donate it. Get it out of your space. It's not serving you well. And just the fact that you own it doesn't mean that it is valuable to you, but we have an ownership bias. So... And this brings up another conversation. You can tell I listen to podcasts too, and I was listening to one between, Oprah Winfrey and Eckhart Tolle. And and Eckhart Tolle mentioned this. He said something about we tend to hoard our thoughts or something along those lines, and it really connected with me. Have you ever watched the show Hoarders on Amazon Prime or wherever you watch, your series? That these people who hoard, it's it's a mental disorder actually based in anxiety, but they hoard things that are no longer useful, sometimes unsanitary or unsafe, and they just hoard these things. Right? And they hang on to them. Well, in the in the program, they bring in help. Usually a psychologist, a professional organizer, you know, and a team of, like, 20 people with gloves and masks to help clean this place out. And the property owner has to make a decision whether to keep the items that they're being dragged out of the house. They stage them on a big tarp in the yard usually. Or to toss the item or to donate the item. Those are the three choices. And it's so fascinating to watch how tightly we cling. And I say we because this is our story with their details. I don't want you to go watch hoarders and think, oh, those people. Think of it as, oh, we do this, don't we? As a species, this is our story, their details. In what way are you hoarding? And sometimes we hoard opportunities or we hoard relationships or we hoard thoughts. And some of those thoughts are unsanitary or unsafe. They don't serve us well. But because we own them, we have this bias to hang on to them, to value them more than they actually serve us. What if we could do that with our thoughts? We take a thought and maybe it's a thought about who you are or what you're capable of and maybe you picked it up a long time ago from someone that you should have been able to trust And that thought is I'm not good enough. And what if you took that thought today and you just looked at it and you said, okay if I didn't already own this thought how much would I be willing to pay to obtain it now? And if that answer is zero or anything close to it, toss it. It's not serving you well. Remember I mentioned our brain's job is to keep us safe, and that's why we have a negativity bias, but our brain's job is also to prove us right. And that's why we have an ownership bias because if we already believe something, our brain wants to prove us right about that. And we tend to collect evidence for our negative thoughts. We hold on to grievances. We prove our fears correct. So because we've invested so much, we wanna hang on to those beliefs. It's kinda ridiculous. Sometimes the fastest path to a better life isn't adding more positives, it's releasing some negatives. Picture the hoarded house. K? And I come in with some things. Here's some really nice things that you can have in your house and you're like, I don't have any room for them because I'm already cluttered up with all this crap. Maybe we need to clear some of the negatives first. And this surprised me when I heard Price Pritchett talking about how it's more important to reduce the negatives than it is even to increase the positives. And they're both important by the way. They're just on different scales. And so if we're really going to effectively add positives to our life, We get to work on lightening the load, and that leads me into the last point I wanted to talk to you about today. If gravity is always pulling down, we need intentional effort and practice to rise, to elevate. Elevation requires effort. Light requires power. There are no surprises here that it's going to take some work. So think about what negative thoughts you've been hoarding that maybe you've been carrying around or piling up around you and it no longer serves you. It's probably not even true. And there's a part of you that knows that, but because you already own the thought and you're so used to having it around, it's hard to toss it. What old resentments or limiting beliefs or self criticisms or assumptions about other people have you been carrying around? We don't control all of our circumstances. What we do control is what we choose to continue to carry around with us. Now this this becomes kind of a conundrum because if I tell you not to think about grapefruit, what are you suddenly thinking about? So it's not enough to say, well, I need to stop thinking this or I need to stop thinking that. I think one of the most powerful and effective strategies we can start with is a brief meditative practice that includes focusing on our breathing. Now you're gonna see this from all of the gurus out there who are teaching personal development. The the yogis that are so, skilled at these practices have taught this for centuries that sometimes quieting the mind is all we need to do and and being fully present. I started this... It's been almost five hundred and fifty days ago now where I do a daily morning meditative practice. And it's just a little three to five minute episode where I calm my body. I relax. I focus on my breathing for three minutes. And during that time, you'll notice if you try this, that during that time when you're focusing on your breathing, what's not cluttering up your mind? All those negative thoughts. Sometimes simply quieting it a bit helps you to release it and to start to declutter. Positivity is not pretending. It's intentionally choosing to apply the positivity model. And if you don't have a copy of that yet, please go to liveonpurposeradio.com/ the model, all one word, and I'll put a cup... Full color PDF in your inbox. K? Go get the positivity model. It's an important way to learn how to operate the equipment of our own mind. Getting rid of some of the negatives is going to make some room for the positives to come in. And I've got one more resource that I'm gonna share with you, but maybe we close with this thought. Vicky and I were in Kenya recently with our daughter doing some humanitarian work, but also enjoying, some amazing country, where the animals, the safari. It was spectacular. And we got on a hot air balloon. Hot air balloons are so interesting because they get filled with this hot air, and there's a lot of upward lift. But to rise, they have to drop some weight. Kinda cool. Hot air balloon doesn't rise because you're adding to it. It rises because it lets some things go. And I think in a similar way, if we can let go of some of those negatives as we add the loft and the lift of the positivity, It's going to take you to some heights that you've never seen before. Here's the offer, and we are just about to launch a new platform where we're providing daily, weekly, monthly positives. This is the hot air that's going to help to lift you. As we get rid of the negatives, the daily positives that we have planned for you are to give you that three to five minute meditative session every day so that you can calm your mind. Get rid of some of the negatives. Stop clinging to those things that are holding you down. So go... You can get in on the prelaunch for this right now, and it's at liveonpurposeradio.com. So again, the name of the podcast, liveonpurposeradio.com/positives,plural,positives. And that will get you into, the the prelaunch of this platform. I think it's going to be powerful. And we're developing some ways that you can share that as well and hopefully partner up with us to spread positivity around the world and reduce some of the negatives that are going on. You know, maybe the question isn't how to create more positives. Those are definitely available and important. Maybe the question is what negatives we're finally willing to toss, to put down, shed some of those negatives. We've got you on this. Thank you for joining us today at Live On Purpose Radio. You've heard it. Now it's time to apply it. Let's go live on purpose. Did you get what you came for? Give yourself the gift of taking real action on what you realized today. Please share this episode with someone you know would value it, and leave us a rating too. It's time now to live on purpose.