- Hey, do you have any candles at home?
Good, because you're gonna be needing
them for today's challenge.
Okay, before we get to the challenge,
lets talk about this, do you know
what your most valuable resource is?
Hm?
Some people guess money, other people say time,
and I say something all together deeper.
I believe that our most valuable resources is our focus.
Our attention.
What we actually give our presence to.
Why, because where ever we put our attention and our focus,
we flow all of our other resources in that direction too.
Where attention goes, energy flows.
So if you're putting your attention on something,
chances are you're putting your time,
your energy, and your money there as well.
Now, if you think about it, when you
give you attention to something, you grow it,
but here's the little bit of a
nasty bump in the road, or a little
trap that we can fall into.
Humans are predisposed to give
our attention, to negative things.
It's called the negativity bias, and here's how it works.
You know when someone gives you like 10 compliments,
but one piece of criticism, what are
you most likely to focus on?
Yup, its that one piece of criticism.
It doesn't even counter balance those
10 compliments, you just focus on the negative.
Or for example, if you drive past a car crash,
we can't help but be drawn to look at it right,
we're fascinated by a negative thing that has happened,
and we focus on the pain loss and suffering
of the people in the car crash and we actually
sometimes ignore or completely don't notice
all the helpers that have come to help.
The positive passes us by while
the negative imprints in our minds.
Or how about this one where amidst
a world wide global pandemic, and we
focus on all of the pain and loss and suffering and anxiety,
and we forget to notice all of the silver linings,
the blessings, the opportunities that
are afoot for us and our families during this time.
It is natural, and it's because our brain
is wired to say, er er er, alarm, warning,
something dangerous, something bad
is over there, avoid that thing.
That's why the negativity bias is there,
it's there to protect us, it's there
to call to our attention anything
negative that could cause us harm.
But it's a little bit like a trippy fire alarm right.
It doesn't just trip when the house is on fire,
it also trips when your pasta is about to boil over.
So even if you are not in direct risk for anything,
that's related to the corona virus,
even if you're not directly at risk
of being sick, or having some kind of major loss,
you feel on high alert, on high intensity,
because of what you're reading in the news,
because of what you're hearing.
Now is the part that that candle comes in.
I want to invite you to go on a 24 hour positivity diet.
Call it a media fast, okay.
24 hours where you are fasting,
where you are staving off, where you
are saying no to any negative inputs,
negative thoughts in your own head,
negative stories on your Facebook feed,
negative fear sharing that your friends and family
are sharing with you, your gonna say no,
your not gonna let it in for 24 hours.
It's not gonna hurt anyone, it not gonna
change the fact that you're still
following the guidelines, and you're still
doing all the logical things, it's
just going to create a bubble for 24 hours,
where you're not letting those negative stuff in,
and I want you to see how it feels.
So for these 24 hours, whenever you have
a negative thought, you're just gonna
pop it, you're gonna burst that bubble,
you're gonna kick it away, thank you goodbye,
I don't need that right now, I'm on
a negativity fast, I'm on a positivity diet.
On my positivity diet, every time
a negative thought comes up, I'm gonna
turn my attention to the positive.
So like I'm looking at a car crash,
yes the negative is right there,
but I'm going to notice how people stop and help,
and that is a beautiful thing.
Or how, the magic of modern medicine
is gonna to save those peoples lives.
Or how they have insurance in place,
and they're not gonna lose all their assets.
Or whatever it is I can focus on that's positive
about that situation that helps those people.
Every time you're gonna think about a negative thought,
you're gonna switch it out for a positive one.
And so I want you to light a candle right now,
to mark the beginning of your positivity diet.
And in 24 hours, go ahead and set an alarm on your phone.
In 24 hours, you can come off the diet if you want too,
or you might just decide to keep
it going for the remainder as I am.
Right, because we have to show up
with positivity for our children.
We have to be mentally strong.
And we are not immune to the negative impacts
of the corona virus on our mental state.
Now here's the fact, we can wash our hands,
and sanitize, and stay home, and wear masks,
and do everything we can to boost
our immunity and to lower our
exposure to the virus itself.
But my question to you is, are you
doing the same for your mental health?
I love it that you're following
all the guidelines to stay safe
and protect others from spreading
this negative virus impacting them.
It's contagious and it's dangerous.
Are you doing the same for the
mental virus of anxiety and fear?
Are you blocking out, are you
creating a sanctuary, are you creating
a safe protected space of your own mental health.
Are you building up your immunity,
and are you killing and sanitizing
any kind of tiny insidious fear based,
anxiety based, negative thought based ideas
from infiltrating and infecting your mind?
That's what I want you to be doing right now.
I want you to be boosting your
immunity to the anxiety and the fear,
because here's the deal.
Do you know that when wars break out,
yes, they bomb each other, and they shoot each other,
but the worst type of warfare is often
the psychological warfare.
When they can break down the other sides hope,
that's when they know they can beat them.
Listen corona virus can infiltrate
in all sorts of physical ways.
But if it infiltrates us and spirals us
into anxiety and depression, then
whether or not we physically have the virus,
we have it mentally, we have it emotionally.
Don't let yourself be at risk for being
emotionally infected by this contagious virus.
Boost up that psychological immunity,
and don't let it get you at that level either.
So light that candle, go on the positivity diet,
go on the media fast, and I want to see
a picture of that candle today.
Show me a picture, hashtag playpandemic,
and make sure everybody knows,
that physical immunity is not enough.
Emotional immunity is what we also
need to go for, not letting this virus bring us down,
bring us into anxiety and depression.
Share out the playpandemic challenge
with someone else who needs to hear this message too.