Today, we're talking about overcoming negativity bias. How to focus on the good in life?
Here's something you've probably noticed. Gravity is always on and default is down. This is true in
our psychology as well. These six tips will help you to stay on the positivity side when the world
is trying to pull us down. So, let's jump in. Tip number one, practice identifying both the upsides
and the downsides of everything. One of the traps that we run into as human beings is that we tend
to grab one or the other, and we think all or nothing. That it's all black and white.
But really, when you think about it, there are upsides and downsides to everything. Wait, can
this be true? Really, there's upsides and downsides to everything? You know, a couple of months ago, I
was on my way to the office. I had a webinar set up with 200 people enrolled to come and learn about
creating hope on demand. And as I was waiting to go through the intersection, just thinking about all
of these people that I got to serve in less than an hour. My thoughts kind of tuned everything else
out. Well, the light turned green. And as I slowly proceeded into the intersection, bam! Out of nowhere
somebody comes through the red light at 40 miles an hour in totals. My Toyota Tacoma pickup truck,
may it rest in peace. Now, thankfully, everyone was okay. But this threw a bit of a wrench into
my plans for the day. Thankfully, I had a team that was able to step up and help out with the webinar.
What about something like that? You know, when life just hits you out of nowhere in totals your plans.
What could be the upsides of that? It's a pretty good question. But psychologically, it's usually
not a question. It's a statement disguised as a question. What could be good about this!
Hear the exclamation point? See, it's not a question. It's a complaint. It's a protest.
Put a question mark back on it. What could be good about this? What could be the upsides in
this? I tell you from that car accident, I have seen a number of upsides including being introduced to
Kate, who was my angel and took care of me during that difficult time. To Karen who showed up and
gave me a ride where I needed to go. She's an old family friend of ours that I got to reconnect
with in that moment. All the way through to an insurance settlement that allowed us to switch
out an old car for a newer safer vehicle that Vicky and I now get to enjoy. Are there any upsides
to this? Find them. Get good at practicing to identify both, the upsides and the downsides
for everything. Here's tip number two, acknowledge your choice. Now, you'll notice that you don't get
to choose everything that happens in your life. Sometimes it just comes out of nowhere and smacks
you. What is your choice? Your choice has to do with what you focus on, and what you focus on you feel.
What if I were to focus on all the downsides of that accident? I would be feeling pretty wiped out.
And there are downsides, trust me. And it's normal for humans to see the painful, difficult part of
something. It's a little harder sometimes in a painful circumstance to see the upsides. What
we focus on we feel. Acknowledge your choice. Your circumstances aren't making you feel
any particular way. You get to choose what you focus. Tip number three, lay off of the should.
Enough already. Sometimes we think we should think differently, we should feel differently.
Here's a tool that I've found that really helps. It's a simple phrase or not. Or not, let me tell you
a couple of ways I've used this. I had a client in my office, and he recognized and realized as
he learned how to operate the equipment of his own mind through the powerful psychological principles
that we were discussing. He said Dr. Paul, I just really need to think differently. And I said or not.
You know, he almost came out of his chair. He's like, but I want to. Well, I can get behind that. You want
to think differently? But we're moving it out of the should. It's not that you need to or that you
have to or that you must or that you should. It's simply an option. And when we use the phrase or not,
it brings that to the forefront of our mind where we can actually exercise our choice that
we already talked about. It's simply a choice. What do you want? I really enjoy making these
videos for you, and I've got a few more tips. But you are brilliant, and you've got some good ideas
as well. Would you share what your ideas are? Right down there in the comments. Let's see what we can
do to help each other come up with some good ideas. Then I'll give you the rest of mine too.
In fact, here's tip number four, manage your inputs. What inputs? The inputs to your brain. What are you
listening to? What do you engage with? Who are you reading? What Podcasts are you subscribed to? How
do you spend your time? And what is it that you're putting into your mind? You know, I did a training
recently with a whole room full of people who got to do this experiment. And I had two-thirds of the
room close their eyes. Well, the other third of the room were shown a couple of words, and I
had to memorize and think about and connect with those words. And then they closed their eyes and
the middle section opened their eyes. And I showed them different words. I had them think about it,
memorize those words. And then they closed their eyes, and then the last third of the room. Same
thing. And then I had everybody open their eyes and I showed them one word that was missing a letter.
And I said what's the missing letter? And each third of the room said a different letter. Why?
Because of the input that I had already given them. Your brain is going to take whatever
you're putting into it and manage that around to a point where that becomes your output too.
What we think about comes about. And people tell me all the time. Oh, it doesn't affect me. I can
watch the violent shows and it doesn't affect me, or I can play those video games and it doesn't
affect me, or I can view that pornography and it doesn't affect me. Look, it affects you. What you
put in becomes the material that you create what you put out. So, watch the inputs. Just
do a little audit and see what it is that I'm listening to that I'm watching that I'm using
for entertainment. And it will make a difference, I promise. Manage the inputs. Tip number five has
to do with one of those inputs. It's music. And music is a powerful way for us to connect with our
emotional experiences human beings. But a lot of people make a mistake when it comes to their music.
See, our tendency is to match our music to our mood. My tip for you today is to match your mood
to the music. Meaning, you select the music that carries the mood that you're trying
to create. It's a lot easier to go the other way around, and say well, I'm feeling really
angry. So, I'm gonna listen to angry music, or I'm feeling really sad. So, I'm gonna listen to sad
music. There's nothing wrong with that. But if you want to avoid the negativity bias and actually
power up your own mind. Pick the mood that you want to feel, put that music on as your input and then
you match your mood to your music. This has to do with energy and a principle in physics that we
call sympathetic resonance. In fact, I've seen this demonstrated. If you take a tuning fork. I
don't know if you've seen those before. It's an instrument that they use to tune other instruments.
It's just a little metal fork and bing! You get it ringing at a certain frequency. And if you take
that fork along the strings of a harp for example. When it comes to the one with the same frequency
that harp string will start to sing right along with it. Because those energy waves are going
on and there's a resonance there. It's a tune to that frequency. And our brain does a very
similar thing. If you start playing music that's operating at this energy, and your mood is down
here. There's a dissonance. Now, it's easier to just bring our music down to match our mood.
That's what most people do. What I'm suggesting is bring your mood up to match your music and then
there will be resonance again that takes a little work, it feels a little unnatural. But try that out.
Match your mood to the music. Now, I promised you six tips. Here's number six, find someone to serve.
This is powerful. I got to share the stage last week with Meg Johnson. Go look her up here on
YouTube. She's an amazing, inspiring speaker. She's quadriplegic after accidentally jumping off of
a 40-foot cliff when she was a young woman. And now, she goes about spreading positivity. And one
of her core messages is service. I was talking to Meg about this because she doesn't even know why
service is important. I know the psychology behind it and without getting into all of the details
about the psychology. Here's what I've found. When we seek to serve other people, it changes our mood.
Like I said there's a lot of reasons for that. But if you want to overcome negativity bias quickly.
Go out there today and find someone that you can make a meaningful difference for. It doesn't even
matter if you know them or not. I was actually one of the trainees in this training. I try to enroll
in programs to sharpen my skills all the time. And as I was going through this training, they gave us
a break. And during the break, they said now, you're gonna go out and you're going to have your dinner
or your lunch or whatever break it was. And you're gonna find three people to make a meaningful
difference for. You have to do that before you come back after lunch. That's a weird assignment, but it
was so compelling as we got out there. There's a small group of us that were like okay, how are we
going to do this? And we went over to Home Depot and we're just looking for someone to serve, right?
When you look you'll find, I promise. And as we're sitting there in the parking lot at Home Depot
we see this elderly couple coming out with one of those flatbed trailers and they've got two
toilets loaded onto this flatbed trailer. I don't know what happened at their house. But they're
pushing this flatbed trailer out to their car. And I thought beautiful. I'll go help them load these
into their car. And I went out and offered my help and this older gentleman who's pushing the cart. He
said oh no, we're fine. And the lady is looking at me like, yes, please help. Because he's got a
bad back and it's just he could use the help. Well, I grabbed hold and I pushed it out there, helped
him get it into their car. And then this kind gentleman just turned to me and he said thank you
so much that was awesome. And they went on their way. Now, that's a simple thing. How did I feel?
It gave me a boost. It was and I knew that service is important. But as I was experiencing that in
the moment, it made this huge difference for how I felt. What did it do for them? It made a meaningful
difference. Go try this. Find someone to serve. I promise that when you look for someone to serve,
you'll find someone to serve. And then notice what it does to your mood. Hey, if you want to take this
up a level, go to the URL on the screen right here, drpauljenkins.com/positivity. And I will
put you right into a free hope class. I call it the hope class because I've learned how
to create hope on demand. And I'm going to share that with you in the class. Come, see.