Positive mindset: How to make your mind actually work for you, not against you.
Hi, I'm Dr. Paul Jenkins. I am a professional psychologist and I have developed models of
positivity that get past the trite, fluffy just think positive that we hear from motivational
speakers or people who don't even really know what positivity is. By the end of this video,
you will know what positivity is from a psychological perspective.
Here's where we have to start. It's called metacognition. Now, that's
just a fancy psychological word that means thinking about thinking. You have to turn
that on in order to see what your mind is doing, and I think you'll be really
fascinated to see these two processes. It's my job to illuminate the obvious.
Think about that. I get paid to tell people things they already know. This is so cool. But there's
obvious things that are completely unnoticed, like the fact that we are speaking English here today.
Did you notice? It's obvious, but you don't necessarily notice it
until it's called your attention or the feeling of your shoes.
Can you feel 'em? Oh, now, now that I've mentioned it, that's what we're talking about. Many of the
processes in our mind are obvious but unnoticed until they're called to your attention. It's
my job to call them to your attention. So let's start with this one. It is what it is,
and that can be kind of annoying depending on who's saying it. But for purposes of our
conversation here today, it just means the way things are right now without changing anything.
It is what it is. It's who you are. It's where you are.
It's who you're with. It's what you have. It's the way things are going
right now. Are you with me? One of the profound truths that I think serves us well in psychology
is that circumstances are neutral. That doesn't mean that they're easy, painless. In my book,
Pathological Positivity.
Chapter one is titled lightning strikes. This is about a time in my life when I went through
a bankruptcy. At the time, I thought this was the most difficult thing, and it is challenging,
right to go through financial struggles like I was experiencing during that time of my life.
I remember thinking, oh, this is hard. Oh, this is difficult. This is painful. When
I said circumstances are neutral, I would've probably fired me for saying that when I was
going through this time. At about the same time, Vicki and I, my wife and I had an opportunity to
serve as leaders for a youth group that was going on a pioneer reenactment trek.
And during that time we got to study up on some of our own pioneer ancestors,
including the molten family. The molten family boarded a ship in Liverpool,
England in 1856 with their six children. Two days into that voyage, they had seven
children. The baby was born on the ship. Can you imagine that? When they got to the United States,
and this was in the early days before there was any Western settlements in the United States.
They got as far west as they could before the winter storms
we're expected to threaten the successful completion of any of the companies that
would leave after that date. Well, there was one company that was still heading out.
It was called the Willy Handcart Company. You can go look it up if you want. These
are my ancestors that were involved in this handcart company of pioneers.
If you know anything about the Willie Company, they encountered some early
winter storms in Wyoming that actually killed a large percentage of that company,
my ancestors survived. But as I thought about these two parents dragging their seven children
across these wintry plains of Wyoming, not knowing whether they would survive,
it triggered something in my mind about exactly what I'm sharing with you.
Let's go back to the model. It is what it is and what it is for me
was a bankruptcy. What is my mind doing with it? You see the word there at the
bottom? Evaluation, meaning judgment. You can't turn it off. Notice this,
you are constantly judging your circumstances. Aren't you? Yeah, and you judge yourself.
You judge your family members. You judge the economy, you judge the government, you judge
the weather. You're judging me. It's cool. I'm judging you. We can't turn it off. That's what I
want you to see. This is an obvious but unnoticed process that's going on in our mind all the time.
We have to judge our what it is, and I was judging mine. So using my example bankruptcy.
It is what it is. Can you imagine anything better than that? Yeah. That's not hard,
right? Like no bankruptcy, like I'm doing fine. I'm paying all my bills. I can imagine that. What
happens when we take what it is bankruptcy and we compare it in our imagination to something better,
like no bankruptcy, then how do we feel about a bankruptcy?
It sucks, and you are always right about how you feel. How
you feel is 100% consistent with the way your mind is doing this process.
Track that, that red arrow and the negative is how you feel. You're always right about how you feel.
Now you're probably getting ahead of me. Can you imagine anything worse than a bankruptcy?
Oh yeah, you can. And I told you where my mind went as I was studying about the Molten family,
and I realized they weren't even sure if they could feed their kids for the next several
weeks. They weren't sure who they would have to bury the next morning when they got up to
leave. When you take what it is a bankruptcy and you compare it to something far worse,
like what I described to you with the Molten family than how do you feel about a bankruptcy?
Ah. Lucky, you're always right about how you feel. How you feel is a hundred percent
consistent with the way your mind is doing this process. So you'll see that green arrow is the
direction of comparison and that positive feeling that comes. This is gratitude. Look,
it is what it is. You can't turn off the evaluation that's going to happen in your brain.
What do you get to choose? Now, notice this,
you don't always get to choose what it is. Sometimes that just lands in your lap,
but you always get to choose which direction you look to make your judgment or evaluation
of what it is, and that changes how you feel. I promised myself when I started this video,
I'm going to give you some brain hacks and the fastest way I know to hack your mind into
getting into a positive mode in evaluation, which we already talked about, is gratitude.
A gratitude exercise where for five days in a row you come up with
25 things for which you are sincerely grateful, but I don't want you to do it
in the wimpy way that most people do. Usually when we do a gratitude list,
we just pick the easy stuff, you know, puppies and rainbows and indoor plumbing.
Anybody can be grateful for the easy stuff. I want you to take it up a notch and find what
you're grateful for in the hard stuff. You think about the hard, difficult, painful,
frustrating things that are going on in your life, like a bankruptcy,
and find what you are grateful for. In that, from that, because of that.
This is a powerful way to power up your positivity, and let's take it a step farther.
Would you share what came to your mind that you could be grateful for in your
difficult circumstances? Go to the comments down below. Let's share some ideas of how
this works. What could you be grateful for from the difficulties? Put it in the
comments. You might also be wondering, where can I get a copy of this model?
Oh, I'm glad you asked. I'd be happy to provide you one. Go to the URL on the screen,
drpauljenkins.com/themodel and I will put a nice color copy of this
model into your hands. Now remember, I promised you I'd give you two processes
that are going on in your mind. Turn on the metacognition. Keep that going.
Think about your thinking. Here's another process. You'll see the word at the top
there is creation. We can't turn this one off either. Any more than we can turn off evaluation,
which we already talked about, or gravity. When's the last time you
got up in the morning thinking, oh, I wonder if gravity's on?
It's on. And these are on as well. Evaluation and creation. We're talking about now, creation
of what is to be, and that doesn't exist yet. We haven't created it yet. So all we
can do at this point is imagine. Think about it. How you doing next week? You
don't know. You've got something to do with it. Please don't forget that, but you don't know.
So all you can do is imagine what is to be. Think for a moment about how it feels when you imagine
or predict or expect that what's coming is even worse than what you already have, how do you feel?
This, my friends, is anxiety. That's 30 years of clinical experience in a nutshell. Anxiety
is when we imagine, cuz we don't know that what's coming is even worse than what we've already got.
When we predict that in creation mode, we feel anxiety. Conversely,
how do you feel? Focus on the feeling. Think about your thinking. How do you feel when you imagine or
predict or expect that what's coming is even better than what you've already got? Woohoo.
This is hope. You'll see this part of the model looks very similar to
the part that we talked about before, but the arrows are exactly opposite.
We don't always get to choose what it is, but we do get to choose what we imagine is to be,
and that's important. When we get into creation coaching, I'm constantly reminding
my clients that what you imagine matters because you have to imagine at first,
before you can actually go create it. Check that out and see if it's true.
Look around the room where you are. Everything that you see
had to be imagined first before it was physically created. That's how it works.
So it matters what we do here. Okay? I promise you brain hacks for these. When we go to creation
mode, here's your hack. I call it better by 8. Just look at your watch or your clock.
How sure are you that eight o'clock is coming? Pretty darn sure, right? Well,
how sure are you that you'll be around for eight o'clock? Almost as, I mean,
you've made it to every eight o'clock so far your whole life, and there's two
every day for those of you who don't get up early. There's only two possibilities.
I used to think there were three. I've eliminated the third because I don't think it's possible for
things to be exactly the same at eight o'clock as they are right now. At the very least, you're
gonna be a little older, aren't ya? Yeah. So if things are not gonna be the same, then by your
own evaluation or judgment, which you can't turn off? Things have to be either better or worse
at eight o'clock. Now, if I gave you a challenge to go out and make your life
worse by eight o'clock, you could totally pull that off. You would never do that on purpose,
but use that creative energy now to think of some ways that you could make your life
better by eight. Just invite your mind to go there and what do you notice happening?
Do you see the thoughts? If you ask your brain to come up with ways to make things better,
it could be a little or a lot. That's up to you, you're the creator. Ask your
mind to go there. And what if you were to do that for the same five
days as you do the gratitude exercise? That means you get to have 10 upgrades.
How awesome is that and how does that feel? This is a way to create hope on demand,
and folks, this saves lives. The number one risk factor for suicide is hopelessness. What
if we could create hope on demand? Let's go back to that model because there's a little
warning that I need to share with you. What we do in evaluation mode matters.
Check it out. When you're feeling depressed, inadequate, failed, defeated, flawed, like
you're not good enough. See how that's a negative evaluation. How likely are you to go do something
productive? Yeah, not so much. In fact, you're more likely to make a mess. That's a negative
evaluation. Sends us into negative creation, and we are likely to do things that make it worse.
Conversely, what happens when we start from a positive evaluation? When we start from a
place of gratitude, profound gratitude for the rich, abundant life that we already have without
changing anything? Hmm, from that energy, how likely are we to go do something productive?
That's the key. We start with positive evaluation
and it makes us more likely to do positive things in creation mode.
One of my clients said that this is kinda like the currency that we take to the
creation game. I love thinking about it that way. So here's the whole model,
and you don't have to write this down or try to capture it in your notes. Go
to drpauljenkins.com, spelled with a dr slash the model, all one word.
I will put this in your inbox. You're welcome. Now you've seen from this model. How our mind is
actually processing our experience in those two modes, evaluation and creation. You know I said
earlier that circumstances are neutral. Meaning it could always be better, it could always be
worse. Our thinking is not neutral, but it's too simplistic to think about it simply as thinking.
We need to break it down into those two modes, evaluation and creation. Does
this resonate with you? I certify and train positivity practitioners. If that
sounds like something you want to do, take a moment to fill out this free assessment
to see where you are in your journey to become a positivity practitioner.
drpauljenkins.com/practitionerquiz. If this model is resonating with you and
you want to use it and become licensed and credentialed to teach it, take that survey
next and then let's have a conversation about how we can move you forward in that process.