Latest / Pathological Positivity / Create with Confidence: How to Finally Follow Through on What Matters Most – Episode #685
Transcript
- This is Live On Purpose Radio, episode 685, Create with Confidence, how to finally follow through on what matters most. 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, and welcome back to Live On Purpose Radio. This is doctor Paul, the shrink who expands your life. In today's episode, a happy new year. This episode is airing on New Year's Day two thousand twenty six, if you can believe that. And as we head into this brand new year, I think many of us feel the pull to set fresh goals and intentions. You know, the the New Year's resolution, tradition. But how do we make sure this is the year we actually follow through on that? In this episode, we're going to get into a powerful psychological tool that I am excited to share with you today. I'll walk you through the creation process. There's six parts to it. So hang around, get all six that your brain will naturally follow and show you how understanding this process can absolutely transform the way you approach your goals or resolutions, if you like that word, for 2026. So let's jump in. Every goal is a creation project, and creation always follows a process. To give you a little background on this, I've been paying attention as a psychologist, but also as a man of faith. How are things created? Going clear back to the very original creation when God created the earth. And this process reflects how everything is created. If you want to review this, I'm going to give you an invitation, before we wrap up today to come to a webinar that I'm doing on 01/06/2026. So if you're catching this episode after that, we'll we'll have some other resources available. But if you go to my book, Pathological Positivity, you will see in chapter 24, I share this six part process. And it's really a summary of other aspects of creation that I've talked about in the second half of that book. So the book is divided into the the first half, which is all about evaluation and the second half, which is all about creation that eventually became the positivity model. And writing that book was part of the process. So that in itself is an example of a creation process. Here's the process. Discontent, the choice, the question, the plan, the work, and the manifestation. Let me walk you through each of these six steps. You're always in this process. The key is recognize where... To recognize where you are and what's next. So when you understand this process, you can stop getting stuck because you always know what's next. Let me give you just a a high level overview of this, discontent. In the book, I symbolize this with with a little lightning bolt. And chapter one in my book is titled Lightning Strikes, and it's when I went through a bankruptcy. Discontent is when we experience pain or... And it can be from severe pain ranging through mild... A mild sense of, oh, things could be better. K? So this represents discontent. And just like necessity is the mother of invention, you've heard that. Right? Discontent would be the parent of creation because without it, nothing is ever created. Discontent is exactly what tells us that we have a creation project ahead of us. So we're going to experience discontent. I love the way Tim Hansel put this in his book, You Gotta Keep Dancing. He said pain is inevitable, and I think it's because we are creators. But then he followed that up and said misery is optional. And, we make a mistake sometimes as human. Welcome to the Earth, by the way. As humans, we make this mistake that when we experience discontent, we think that it means that something is wrong, when really what it means is there's something to be created. There's a project that lies ahead of us here. Now discontent always leads to the next step, which is the choice. When... And I symbolize this one with a, a pair of eyeglasses. You'll see that in the book when I give you a visual representation of this six part process. The eyeglasses have to do with paradigm or the way we see things. And it is a choice. But until you see it as a choice, it's not. And this is where people get stuck. That's why my job is to illuminate that choice. What you do with it after that is totally up to you. I'm not here to tell you how to think. But I want you to notice that there is a basic choice between a victim paradigm and an agent paradigm. And I'm not talking about a victim of crime or victim of abuse. I'm talking about a victim mindset, a victim way of seeing the world. And in that victim mode, when we experience discontent, we blame. We blame our circumstances. We blame the government. We blame our spouse or our kids. We blame our boss. We blame the economy. We blame the weather. And and this blame puts us into a a cycle, a very a very unpleasant cycle. There's a scripture in the Bible that talks about a dog returning to its vomit, and this is what a victim cycle looks like. One of my clients pointed out, oh, like a puke smoothie. And I'm like, oh, thank you for that image right before lunch. But really that is the victim cycle because you go recycle your discontent. And usually it contains phrases like, yeah, not only that. And it becomes a whining kind of a thing. Why me? That we become why babies when we're in victim mode, and it it can go on forever. Just like puke smoothies, there are no expiration dates on that victim cycle, and we can be trapped there for decades. Now, what if we make an agent choice and you get to choose? But remember, until you see it as a choice, it's not. Awareness precedes choice. Once you see your choice and choose the agent direction, then we can move over to the next four steps of this creation process. And a lot of people just get stuck on number two, on the choice. As long as you're in victim mode, you will recycle your discontent. Fuke smoothies. Alright. Moving on. What's step three? When you make the agent choice, you move on to the question. I symbolize this one with just a big old question mark. And it's always some version of the same question. If not this, then what? That's a pretty good question. And victims don't even ask it. They're too busy trying to blame their circumstances for whatever they're going... For their discontent. If not this, then what? Opens up a new possibility of what we are going to create. Now, hopefully, you can see how this ties in to your New Year's intentions, your resolutions, your goals. What do I want to create? That's how we bring up the question. Now the question leads us to the next step, the plan. Because now we get to figure it out. And planning is where the true creation happens. When I say true creation, nothing just poops into existence. And we've got two more steps. Okay? But this one is essential because what are we going to create? Look around you. In whatever environment you're in right now, look around you and notice that everything you see, everything you notice was created. And either it was created by people or it was created by the great creator of everything else, but it was created. And before it was created as a physical entity, somebody had to think it up. Somebody had to imagine it. That's what the plan is all about. Everything is created first psychologically, spiritually, at the level of thought and imagination. And then we move to the next step, and that one's called the work. The plan, I I symbolize in the visual model as a little x that's in a thought bubble. And then the work is symbolized by a hammer. We have to actually move elements and reorganize them in order to create something that didn't exist before. Now all of the materials existed when I was replacing the floor in my home. All of the floorboards, all of the material existed on shelves at Walmart. And... Yeah. Or, excuse me, at Home Depot. The Walmart didn't sound right to me when I said it. All of the materials already existed. They were waiting for me to get clear on my plan. And then I had to go transport those materials to my home using my Home Depot card and my Nissan Titan. I I brought them into my environment, and then we actually had to physically manipulate those materials to match the plan. So work, I'm not talking about a work ethic. I'm talking about a principle of physics that says matter cannot be created or destroyed. It only changes form. And the process by which matter changes form is called work. This is a natural law. I'm not saying you should work. I'm saying work is required in order to create a physical entity that matches the image that you created already in your mind. And then that results in step six, the manifestation. And that's where that x that was in the thought bubble comes out, and a thought becomes a thing. It manifests. It becomes a reality. We realize our goal. We make it real. This is the six part process. The main reason that resolutions fail is that most people make resolutions from the discontent stage. There's something in your life that seems off, but then they don't move through the rest of the process, including that choice stage shifting from victim to agent. That is the pivotal point. And I I have to give you this warning. And we'll go over this in the webinar too, but, it's not a linear process. It's a very dynamic process and as you go through, you might get past your victim thinking. You say, okay. Well, if not this, then what? You go into the question. You come up with an answer to that And then your brain offers you five reasons why that won't work. And you immediately reboot your discontent. You're back to stage one. You got clear through to asking that question, and then you go right back to discontent. Or you get past that. You come up with a plan that looks feasible. You think it's going to work. You get the materials in place, and you run into a snag. Something's not the way you... Have you ever done a home improvement project? Do you realize that nothing is square? I measured it here. It doesn't match that. Yeah. I've done this enough to know that at any stage in this process, you can go right back to discontent. And when we have a victim paradigm that follows our discontent, we get stuck. We get stuck in the endless loops, and that's why building trust in yourself to honor your own promises means that you're going to realize, you're going to accept that discontent is part of the deal. And it's going to show up at any given time. Instead of shutting down into victim mode, this could be your breakthrough year. If you have the right tools, think of the excitement and the energy of a new year. It suggests to our mind possibilities. Can we channel that into real, lasting momentum? Can we trust ourselves to follow through? This doesn't have to be another year of half finished goals or started but stopped resolutions or broken promises. As you understand and apply this six part process, it can lead to real change. And you've already got multiple examples in your own life. The breakthrough comes when you stop guessing and start creating with confidence. It's in your nature. It's who you are designed to be. We are powerful creators as humans. And hopefully, understanding this process will put you on a more intentional, purposeful route toward creating exactly what it is that you want this year. Remember, you are invited to attend a free webinar that I'm doing. Again, I know the podcast is Evergreen, and you might be listening to this in January or July or October or 2028. But on Tuesday, 01/06/2026 at 11AM mountain time, I will be providing a free deep dive webinar into this six part process. We're going to get into all of these six parts and show you exactly how to apply it to your goals moving forward in 2026. Just go to the link that's included here in the show description, liveonpurposeradio.com/create. Can you remember that? The name of the podcast plus the word create after a little forward slash. And I would love to see you there. I've got your back, and you've got this. As you apply this moving forward, as always, you've heard it. Now let's go apply it. It's time to 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.