The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – 3 Minute Happiness Journal: Create Happy Habits. Change Your Brain. Transform Your Life by Kristen Butler

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

3 Minute Happiness Journal: Create Happy Habits. Change Your Brain. Transform Your Life by Kristen Butler https://amzn.to/49HS6mc From the author of the hugely popular 3 Minute Positivity Journal, an all-new journal with more prompts, affirmations, and ways to boost your mood in just minutes a day. Kristen Butler created her original, hugely popular 3 Minute Positivity Journal to share the tools, mindset strategies, and habits that helped her go from depressed and broke—literally broken—to happy, thriving, and whole. Now, Kristen—the founder of the online community Power of Positivity, more than 50 million strong—returns with more unique prompts, affirmations, and ways to boost your mood and create happy habits in just minutes a day. Even with all the time we spend on our digital devices, the act of using pen and paper to write out our thoughts, feelings, intentions, reflections, goals, and wins carries great power. Kristen’s gentle yet impassioned guidance helps you tap into that power to boost your mood and change your life, using simple, small, repeated actions to change your life for good. These are the same habits she used to transform her life into the life of her dreams. This journal starts with a practical and inspiring user’s guide and then moves into quick, yet powerful daily entries—only 3 minutes in the morning and 3 minutes in the evening—to set you up for a more joy-filled life every single day. And because leading research reveals it takes 66 days to form a lifelong habit, it includes a full 90 days of prompts and exercises, so you can build a solid foundation for your new happiness routine. You don’t have to spend a decade building an empowering self-care routine through trial and error like Kristen did. With fresh, daily inspiration and done-for-you “check-ins,” all you have to do is show up each day and watch your life transform. Happiness is only a few daily habits away!About the author Kristen Butler is a bestselling author and the CEO of Power of Positivity, a community with over 50 MM followers globally. Kristen was awarded SUCCESS Magazine's Emerging Entrepreneur in 2022. She is a leader, writer, and visionary in personal development with a huge heart and captivating authenticity. Her mission is to uplift the planet! Kristen passionately started Power of Positivity in 2009 after completely transforming her life from rock bottom using the power of positive thinking. Kristen contributes her transformation to a positive mindset, her relationship with God, and an active, plant-based lifestyle.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. There you go, ladies and gentlemen. The Iron Lady sings it. That makes it official. Welcome to the big show.

I didn't do the fade out. There you go. As always, folks, we have the most brilliant minds and inspiring people on the show. The CEOs, the billionaires, the White House presidential advisors, the Pulitzer Prize winners, the people who write these great books that share with you their knowledge, their expertise, their cathartic moments, the lessons of life, or what I always say on the show, stories are the owner's manual to life. And they're so important because that's how we learn from each other. That's how we,

you know, we get other people to make mistakes for us, or hopefully they do. And then we learn from them so that we don't have to do them. But although some people like to try doing their own mistakes four or five times before they learn anything, but we have those people on the show too, as well. In fact, I think I'm the biggest guilty party of that as well we had amazing author on the show multi-book authors are going to bring a lot of positivity and inspiration to the show go to goodreads.com for chest christmas linkedin.com for chest christmas christmas one on the tiktokity and christmas facebook.com she's the author of the latest book to come out june 6 2023 three minute happiness journal creating happy habits June 6, 2023, Three Minute Happiness Journal, Creating Happy Habits, Change Your Brain, Transform Your Life.

Kristen Butler is on the show with us today. She's a multi-book author, and this book was just included in the Grammy Award bag that they give out, you know, the one they give to all the people who go to the Grammys. It's kind of got all the goodies in there, all the little rewards and treats and stuff. So her book was included in there. You know, all the movie stars and all those people in Hollywood are probably reading the book and hopefully they're doing their journal and figuring out how to be happy. Because I know some movie stars that need to be more happy or something.

Some of them just seem a little bit more disgruntled. I'm not going to name names. I don't know why I'm going down this road with that. Kristen Butler is a bestselling author and CEO ceo of power of positivity a community with over 50 million followers globally she was awarded success magazine's emerging entrepreneur in 2022 she is a leader writer and visionary in the personal development with a huge heart and captivating authenticity her mission is to uplift the planet well she's she's going to have to work out some more. That earthing is kind of heavy. She's going to, what was the atlas? Is it

atlas that lifts the planet? There you go. But she's working on it. She's working on her upper arm strength. She passionately started Power of Positivity in 2009 after completely transforming life from rock bottom using the power of positive thinking. She contributes her transformation to a positive mindset, her relationship with God, and an active plant-based lifestyle. Welcome to the show, Kristen. How are you? Hey, thanks so much for having me, Chris. That was an amazing intro. I loved all of it, and you are hilarious. There you go. I hire myself out.

People are like, can we hire you to go on the road with us and introduce us and where we go? So that's a side service. We'll send you details. I love it. Christian.com, where do you want people to find you on the interwebs? Yeah. So my personal website is positivekristin.com, but my brand is powerofpositivity.com. The power of positivity. So give us a 30,000 overview of what this book is about and what's inside. So my latest book is about creating inner happiness because we're always trying to look for happiness outside of ourselves and that's why we usually fall short

and it's always the next thing and so when you create inner happiness through your daily habits that's when you can truly enjoy life and live more fulfilled and less stressed there you go and you've written a book you've written three books. One is called, let me see if I can pull it up here. I've got the one pulled up, The Comfort Zone, which was the main book. Is this a three-minute book, an extension of what was in that core book in April of 23? So this is, you know, an actual book, right?

My other two books are more journals where it's kind of like parts self-help and then an actionable guide that you can show up every day and start taking action and changing your life. The comfort zone is kind of part memoir and then also part journey where you take an inner journey to explore what you are most comfortable with, where your skill sets are, what parts of life that you love most and how you can expand from that place. And so it's really redefining the comfort zone because society loves to say stuff like, hey, the life that you want is outside of your comfort zone

or you're just not stepping outside of your comfort zone enough. And it's not very helpful to people who wanna change their life. And sometimes it's actually damaging to tell someone who want to change their life and sometimes it's actually damaging to tell someone that they're not stepping out of their comfort zone yeah i mean i think instagram's kind of guilty that they feed a lot of fomo to people hey you're not living your best life if you're not on a private jet and i don't know shopping for the most expensive purses

on rodeo drive and keeping up with the the Joneses turns out about half of them are faking it on Instagram. And it's true. You see it detrimental to people's self-esteem and their lives. And in fact, now, you know, I think a bunch of states are suing social media companies because they're like, hey, you guys are selling a bad bag of goods, a little too much hype. So tell us a little bit about your stuff. How did you grow up? What got you down this journey of finding positivity? We alluded to some of it in the bio. What was your upbringing and influences

and got you down this road? Yeah, you know, growing up, you know, my mom, those four kids, we were poor, we were on welfare. And so very early on, I was the oldest and I was always just trying to problem solve and figure out how can I fix this situation? Or how can I at least break this cycle so that when I'm older, I don't have to deal with these kinds of things. Like you said, you know, learning from someone else's story so you don't have to repeat it. And so at a very young age, I kind of got a bit obsessed with success. And back then, the only thing that I really heard was step outside of your comfort zone, push yourself, work harder, you know, do more. And, you know, as a child and a daughter with part of a family with three other children, you know, I needed that extra time and I needed that extra care that I didn't necessarily have.

And so in school, I kind of struggled and had a bit of I wouldn't say slow learning, but it definitely took me extra time. And I started to realize, though, that if I studied more and I tried harder and I pushed myself, that I could change my circumstance. I could get better grades. I could befriend people if I if I did more, if I went over the top. And I really started this kind of overworking behavior at a very young age. And even in college, I filled my class schedule to the brim. I would work for my extra time. And so I never really had fun. I never had any work-life balance. I didn't have any kind of self-care routines. And over time that developed into burnout. I started having depression, anxiety, and all of that. And so what I learned from that experience is you really do have to create a balanced routine for yourself unless you want to continue to spiral

out and burn out and live that life where you're just constantly stressing and never feeling fulfilled. And you can really do that. And I think a lot of people do that. I think you're talking on your website and never giving myself the space to unwind, relax, have fun. I took life way too seriously. And every area of my life was falling apart. I did find a lot of success, but then I would fall on my face and I would lose another business and I would fail again. Yeah, I was in bed for two weeks straight back then. And to me, it literally felt like I had failed so much that I should just give up. You know, I really had two options.

Should I keep going or is this it for me? And so in those two weeks, it was like I had to start rebuilding. And from that place, gratitude really helped me. I had to remind myself like, hey, hey Kristen you do have a bed to sleep on you have a roof over your head you know I invest invested so much time into my business and no time into myself so I had to start learning how do I care for myself how do I prioritize what's comfortable this whole time I've been pushing myself out of my comfort zone and relying on discomfort to fuel me. And so it was really like a backwards, more inward journey that I had

to take. I think a lot of people go on that. The hustle bro culture, the hustle culture, it kind of preaches this, hey, you always got to be hustling and working 24-7 and working on a deal. And people fry out. I mean, it really is. There's an endless amount of thing where you can sit around all day long and be like, I'm going to be like Elon Musk. And the reality is it takes a lot of luck and opportunity in being in the right place, the right time, the right partner. I mean, there's so much that goes into the combination

of becoming a billionaire and successful. Thinking you will your way to it, the odds of propensity are so against you, it's not even funny. But people drive themselves mad with it. They see other people that are either presenting a fakeness of success or maybe they, you know, I'll see people, you know, waving money around and cars and everything. And, you know, you found out they, they got, they had some rich parents and they had something, there's, there's some people that do build their own money and their own success, you know, but those are usually far and few between usually it's inheritance or trust

fund kids. And so you can't look at those people and be like well how come i'm not like them well you just weren't born with a silver spoon in your mouth they and even successful businesses you know i've owned a lot of businesses it's hard to be successful but you you raised a good point and this is something i found through my cathartic losses and moments of business and money was gratitude and sitting down and going, wait, why am I focused on what I don't have? What do I have? And yeah, my life is, my life's pretty darn good right now. What do I have?

And I've gone through some hard cathartic moments and, and, and now I have it on my schedule every Sunday that I have what we, Iartic moments. And now I have it on my schedule every Sunday that I have what I call Gratitude Sunday. And it's a day for me to refill my bucket. You talked about emptying yours and not having anything left to give. And so it's a way for me to sit down, kind of ponder my life, look over things, plan the week, be grateful for everything, spend time with my little dog family maybe go through my history my archives process my photos you know things that i care about you know i care about my dog photos so i'm always putting those away and archiving them make sure they're backed up but a lot of people don't really take that into consideration of of being grateful for what

you have and how it really contributes to abundance. Yeah, I love that because you're savoring the things that are most important to you that you're grateful for. And I think that is important, kind of either setting a day for that or if you can't, just moments throughout the day. Whatever time you have, making sure that you are reflecting because it does really become who you are. And yeah, that really is what saved me and so many people talk about gratitude so it's like oh it's just everybody talks about it or that's just too simple or that's not going to solve my problem but it's cool that the simple things actually are the most important yeah yeah yeah you have to reward yourself too. Like it's my day where Friday and Saturday are date nights. Sunday is my day.

So I'll usually take myself out to a nice dinner. I'll try to go someplace where I can be reflective during the summer. I would go out to a place that sits on the lake and it's got a porch patio that sits on the lake and have a nice steak and just look at the view and enjoy peace and quiet, play with the dogs in the yard. It's my day, basically. I mean, if you're, I suppose, if you're, you know, in a relationship or family or something like that, you know, maybe that's a good day to really just appreciate your family and spend that quality time together. Maybe turn off all those electronic devices. Yeah, totally. Yeah. And we think that being more productive is going to be better for us or get us further, but we can't access like this flow state that they talk about, right? Because we haven't had a time to unwind. And so I realized that when I balance or I add gratitude or I add these self-care practices, that I actually can be more in the flow when I work. And so I don't have to overwork because I'm a human. I'm not a robot.

And so we've got to remember that. We're not going to be able to just keep going and going and going and produce. Yeah. And it really helps me. Once a week, going out to a nice dinner, whether it's a date night or whether it's me just having my Sunday meal. It sounds like I'm having a last dinner meal. But it's my Sunday meal. It sounds like I'm having a last dinner meal, but it's my Sunday meal.

It's, it's, it's a reward for me that says, Hey, you kicked ass for another week. You did a good job. And so during the week, if I remember feeling like my buckets getting drained and I'm just like, what the hell, why am I, you know, you know, whatever sort of things are creeping into my head, I can always go, Hey man, there's, we're going to refill the bucket on Sunday. And I kind of know that it's there and that really helps me stay grounded and stay grateful and go, okay, let's just buckle down. Let's just chew the elephant one bite at a time this week and we'll get through it. So getting back to your, your book, three minute happiness journal, why, why three,

why'd you call it the Three Minute Happiness Journal? Why is the three minutes important? And why didn't you go for 30 minutes? You know, people have busy lives and especially the people in my community, you know, when I, you know, give them an actionable process, they're like, you know, I don't have time for that. I don't have time for that. I'm too busy. You don't understand. And so I knew that I had to help them in a way that it could be quick. And so there's three minutes in the morning and three minutes in the evening. And some of the things on the list might take a little time. So the entry actually does take three minutes. And

it's funny because a lot of people have timed it and messaged me like this really does take three minutes. Thank you. But it's just kind of reminding because I feel like we just all need reminders. We need that checklist of what is most important to us. What do we feel grateful for? What is going right? You know, what are the three priority things I need to do today? And so it gets your mind right in the morning and it starts your day in a more positive way because I think we all need that. There's just so much negativity that can come at us that, can drown our day really quickly, right? So we fuel up in the morning and then in

the evening, it's more of like a relaxing reflection, kind of like what you're talking about on Sundays. What were my wins? What did go right? Because there's so many things that we could say, oh, that didn't go the way that I expected. But what did go as you expected? Or what went better as you expected? Or what just went good, right, at least? And so you can write those down. Like, hey, it might be a small win. Like, even, hey, I called my dad or something.

Like, wins don't have to be huge. But when you reflect on that, you're able to sleep better at night. Because most of the time when we're having trouble sleeping, we're overthinking about all the things that we didn't do and we're in that really negative place. I just wanted to help them in a very easy and actionable way. There you go. And sometimes it's not about the big wins. Hey, we brought in X amount of dollars or hey, we did this business deal.

Sometimes it's, hey, I told my loved one that i care about them and we had a moment and and and you know i recognize that this person is still really important in my life the you know it's so important and and gratitude is a real i'll tell a story that's why i think important gratitude is really important because when we get hit with darkness, it's a problem. And so recently it became apparent my dog was drinking a lot of water. And I know from my previous dogs, that's cancer. So we're diagnosed with cancer and dealing with it now. And it was really hard of a hit because I've carried dogs through cancer. My last one was almost two years with hospice.

And it was really hard doing that the first time. This time I'm a little bit more equipped for stuff. Yeah. It's, it's just part of the gig. And so the first thing I did when, when the news hit was I went, okay, let's sit down. What am I grateful for? What are our assets here? What do we have to deal with?

Well, fortunately, I'm very empowered from doing our last cancer dog in extending their life and giving them great care and supporting them. I also sat and looked. And so instead of, what I'm trying to say is instead of getting lost in the,

oh God, here it is again. Why me? You know, all that darkness and feeling disempowered. Instead, I went to gratitude and I felt empowered. And I'm like, okay, so what steps can we do? What can we do now in the moment? My dog isn't gone yet. There's no use for me to bury her in my mind right now. There's no use for me to go through the grief process. There's going to be a time for that. So what I need to do is advocate for her and be empowered for her to get her the most she can get out of her life, to get the most we can get out of tests and everything else. And so gratitude really saved me in that moment. And now we're living through like what you talked about,

where at the end of every day, we're going, okay, today's a good day. And I'm focusing on the moments with her and what times we're spending together. She's licking my hand right now underneath the desk. Give me some kisses so she must know I'm talking to her. And so right now, I'm focused on doing kind of what you talked about, those morning and nightly moments where I'm spending a little bit more. You know, it used to be I would get up, brush by the dogs with my coffee, throw them a treat.

And I'm like, you know, guys, and now I'm doing the morning and night thing. Like you've talked about it where I'm like, okay, there she is this morning. Let's really enjoy this moment.

And, you know, I'm not, I'm not focusing on the dread of, of when that time's going to come that, that, come, that moment's going to happen when it happens, and I'm going to cross that bridge when it happens. But we're not going to lose this moment now. And so I love your morning and night thing. And I just wanted to pose that as a great example.

Yeah, that is a great example. What I'm hearing is like you use your grief, you've turned it into gratitude. And that's so powerful because grief is a hard emotion to kind of stay stuck in, especially when you really care for someone. It's almost like it never leaves, but you're using your experience for this experience, which is so important for anyone dealing with grief. Yeah. And the other thing, as I told myself, I'm like, look, don't bury her. The, one of the mistakes I made with my other dog went through cancer previously is when we were day to day, or at least it seemed day to day, although the day to day has ended up lasting a year and a half.

And so I was constantly burying her in my head. I was constantly getting a loss. I was constantly going through grief. And I recognized how much time I lost in not engaging with her in the present and just enjoying the time we had together. And so that's where I'm at now is where I'm like, let's focus on gratitude. Let's focus on being present. Let's focus on enjoying the time and not wasting what we have. And then there will be time for grief. I mean, if I sound like I'm in denial about bearing my feelings, no, there'll be a time.

But there's no use in going through that now. But it's empowered me in so many ways to go through that cathartic moment. And the first thing I went to is, what are my assets? What should I be grateful for? Okay, we got a lot of knowledge on this. We got a lot of experience. We know how to do this. We've been down this road. So I love the concept of having this gratitude journal. So people can take in, in the book, they can write these notes in there. Is that how it works? Yeah, every day. So in the morning there are affirmations there's gratitude there's even

a mental health check to just kind of be real with yourself with how you're feeling but then also how do you want to feel and then writing that down because i'm not about ignoring or numbing emotions but i am about moving through them so So allowing ourselves, allowing us to guide our emotions instead of allowing our emotions to guide us. And like you were saying with gratitude, it brings you into that present moment. And I think that's what's missing. Oftentimes we're in the past or we're thinking about the future, but anything that can get you to be in that present moment to get off of your phone, right. is so important. So it's not like, you know, you have to truly journal out all of your thoughts and feelings. It's a very guided

experience, especially for people who've never journaled. Journaling can be kind of intimidating. So I kind of bring prompts and questions and really make it an experience that is, you know, the same every day. And so you build that routine, but it's also catered to you and how you're doing and your personal preferences with the prompts and the questions. There you go. It's very big on guiding people, but not necessarily telling them exactly what to do, right?

Because we're all so different. There you go. And it's set in a 90-day format? Yeah, the first one is a 60-day. And then my community was like, hey, can we do this like a little longer? And the second one is a 90-day journey because research is now saying that it takes, what, 66 days to form a habit. And so I figured, you know, extend it to 90 days to really implement these things so that when you're waking up, you're automatically thinking about what you're grateful for. There you go. And that's a great way to wake up. You know, I'd had years ago, I'd gone on, I think I turned 50. So it was a big number.

And I'd gone on and I do a lot of performative jokes and and so sometimes i'll go on and you know complain or pitch about something and everybody you know probably try and put a funny slant on you know it's like a stand-up bit i'll do on on facebook oh poor is me woe is me you know stupid me and i was complaining about turning 50 and being facetious about it and someone wrote me and they just go in the comments and hit me like an arrow. And they go, hey, you know what, Chris? You should quit complaining.

There's a whole lot of people who would have loved to make it to 50 that aren't here right now. So maybe just shut up. And it hit me like a ton of bricks. I'm like, holy crap. And what you said, waking up every morning and entering that frame of gratitude. Hey, I woke up, man. ton of bricks i'm like holy crap and you know what you said waking up every morning and being entering that frame of gratitude like hey i i woke up man there's there's a lot of people

that unfortunately don't wake up and i've i've tried that a couple times with too much vodka the night before but unfortunately i still woke up but without making a hangover but you know waking up with that with that mentality mentality, set your face straight. I think it really makes a difference. And then of course, going to bed with that peace of mind. It attracts more positive experiences too. Yeah. I feel like if we're waking up in a negative mood, then we're going to just kind of spiral

down that route and we don't even realize it. Right. But then if we can intentionally kind of grab those thoughts, which we all have and say, no, I'm not going to think like this. I'm going to think about what is going right. You know, especially when you're going through some immense challenges, like what you were talking about. It's like, you have to really grab those thoughts and say, no, I could go down that route, but I'm going to go down this route. And it really serves you so much better. There you go.

Let's talk about some of the offerings you do on your websites or if you want to plug any of the other books. I know she'd like have a texting service. People can text you. You've got huge social media followings. People can follow your wares there. Do you do any, I know you do some speaking. Do you do any, do you have any communities or any coaching that you do? Yeah, I am working on opening up some group coaching.

And so I'm really excited about that. But I do have a course called The Negativity Detox. And really what this is, is it helps you go through your thoughts. I guide you and help you kind of go through some of that negative self-talk that really is stubborn sometimes, right? And kind of get it out of there and help you with more positive affirmations about what's going right and about your life. So the Negativity Detox is a guided course

where you can watch it on demand. And it really helps you with mind, body, and soul, all of these areas that kind of get cluttered. If you think about, you know, your house, when everything's just cluttered everywhere, and you can't really think straight about what you need to focus on and to even really feel good when everything's just cluttered up. So you kind of go in there and clean yourself internally, clean thoughts reprogram them and that's how you can truly live a positive life because like I said I'm not about toxic positivity where you're just like oh I'm fine and you're stuffing it down because that's

how I end up in rock bottom I was like I'm totally fine everything's going just so great and I'm stuffing everything down and I'm numbing it. That's the toxic positivity people are talking about. I'm talking about creating a lifestyle that serves and helps you every day. Because, yeah, we're humans. We're going to have challenges. We're going to have negative thoughts. Things are going to be difficult.

But if you create a life that really helps foster positivity that's true authentic positivity and that's what i'm about not ignoring things and just putting on rose-colored glasses yeah i think some people think that about positivity they're like if i just you know cover my eyes nose and ears those hear no evil see no evil be no evil and go la la la la la lie that somehow that's positivity yeah i mean what do they say ignorance is bliss and sometimes i think like wait it was was i was that like true for me at times and i think it was right but but it's going to always surface in some way and so we better address it when we can and when we notice it right instead of just ignoring it there you go ignorance is bliss but stupidity is completely different people

i know some people on facebook that they use the they think ignorance is bliss but they're really using stupidity and moralism so we won't talk about those people today because i'm being negative the so you got a lot of great offerings a lot of ways that people can help themselves. Three Minute Positivity Journal. So is that a little bit different than the Three Minute Happiness Journal? Yeah. In the intro, I have a 50-page guide. And so if you are new to positive thinking or even living a positive lifestyle, using affirmations, building a healthy routine, I kind of dive into all of that.

So every aspect of the journal, the journal entries is explained in the beginning. And there's that some people are, you know, finding out about this for the first time. And when I first started discovering it, I didn't really understand it. And so I wish I created a guide that I wish that I had a decade and a half ago when I was just really starting to come out of the rock bottom that I was in. There you go. Well, it's great that you're inspiring people and sharing your journey. I see there's a picture on your website, I think, of you and your husband, and you guys have lost some considerable weight, and you have your pants there. So good for you.

And, you know, we go through these cathartic moments in life where we lose our identity. We think we're losing everything. You know, we've put our identity. I think that's what a lot of people do wrong. That's what I did wrong. You know, they built up that their identity was a lot of material things. And then when those material things, you know, are lost, they feel like they lost their identity. And then they're lost themselves because they built their whole identity around that. And one thing I learned over all the years of loss and cathartic moments was as long as they still have me, like I still have

that gratitude point of view where what are my assets? Okay. I got my health. I'm breathing. I got my mind. I built a lot of companies. In 2008, I lost my whole empire of companies we built for nearly 20 years. And basically, nothing was working either when that happened. Our biggest company was a mortgage company. So that went right off the cliff and so i lost all my identity i lost everything and so i had to rebuild and one of the things that had helped me was i'd gone through cathartic moment years earlier when i lost my business partner and i learned that it had been me the whole time who was the the proponent of everything who was kicking ass taking names and and had built everything and so it was like okay well i still got me and i have certain talents and skills i sound like it's his face from from that one thing i'm a man of certain talents and

skills i will find you the ransom but uh liam neeson but you know i i realized that i had certain assets and talent skills you know just i realized that i had certain assets and talent skills you know just like the example i gave with my dog recently i really i sat down and said okay this is this is a moment you know we can have a little bit of sadness but we're not over yet the fight's not over we're not going to quit the fight we're going to go out and into the ring and we're going to put up the good fight but we can, we can't cripple ourselves by not being empowered. Let's, let's figure out what it is. And so it made so much of a difference in the approach to it and the mindset and, and hopefully, you know, finding opportunities. And so, yeah, it's just something I recommend to everybody to take advantage of. So do it people.

Yeah. Yeah. You're, you're,'re a wise man there because it's so true. It's like when you are kind of at a rock bottom or when you have nothing left, you kind of have to gather yourself and say, well, what do I have? And that is a form of gratitude because for me, when I was rebuilding, it was like, well, what do you like to do? What are you good at? And for me, it was social media. And back then, a decade and me, it was social media. And back then, a decade and a half ago, social media was not what it is today. And my family was even like, how are you going to make money on social media? Are you nuts? Because it wasn't even a thing. This was even before Facebook. But I was helping people with their social media and

growing. And that was something that I loved and I love to write. So I'm like, I'm going to gather these skills. I don't have my business anymore and I can't restart. I can't just be a power seller again. It took years and years to build. And so I just had to go from, well, what do I like to do? What's an easy thing that I can begin today? And how can I help other people?

And we have to do that, but we don't feel like we can rebuild when we're in that place. But that mindset shift is really everything because we do have a world of experience that's still there, even if it feels like we have nothing. There you go. And I like what you told example of, of how you lost everything in your, I guess, your eBay business or your business there. And you turned it into social media and you looked at helping others as opposed to just sitting around with a pity party going, woe is me. And you look to help others. And that's a really important aspect of think of that gratitude position because you're

like, what are my assets? What can I do to help other people? And throughout my life, when I've had cathartic moments, I've gone, why don't I go help some other people? I don't have anything, but I do have the will to help people and be positive to change. One of the things, I haven't talked about this for a while on the show, but it was in the show ad nauseum at one point. But back in 2020, when when covid hit we lost an extraordinary amount of money because we used to do shows and travel and and interviews and it was it was a huge i mean it was just watching money burn in six figures and and it just if everybody remembers what covid was like

it was just punch after punch you know we'd be like okay well we lost that show it canceled but maybe this thing i'll be fixed by next month okay that show got canceled you know we'd be like okay well we lost that show it canceled but maybe this thing i'll be fixed by next month okay that show got canceled you know and and it just it just all it was being taken away that we'd built for years and so i remember being really depressed and i was like oh my god it's 2008 all over again and i you know we had a this podcast that we built for nine years that we mostly had talked to silicon valley stuff you know tech stuff and tech ceos my friend robert scoble he put on he put on facebook this really important thing he says here's what you do right now where everything's going to help he was either be you become one of two people, either be a lifter and lift other people or find a lifter.

And that's what you need to do right now. Be a lifter or find a lifter. And that triggered me in saying, oh, okay. All right. And I'm, I'm a leader by natural state. I like to think. And so I sat down and I go, okay, i want to be a lifter because i don't want to be i don't want to have to go find a lifter and i'm not a good follower and i don't

work well with others so i i said okay so what am i going to do so i looked at my assets i go i still have a great podcast and i'm just great on sweet build but i don't really want i don't really care about silicon valley i don't care about google and who gives a shit about apple iphones and androids and stuff like we're we're in a crisis where everyone can lose their life or potentially and lose loved ones and so how am i going to lift people so i was like okay well i'm going to use the podcast to lift people and we opened up the scope of the podcast to all sorts of book owners like yourself, writers like yourself, and everything else. And we're like, I'm going to talk about what I want to talk about. And I'm going to try and use the show to uplift people, inspire people, and teach them great stuff.

Like with having guests like you on, it's going to make people more positive and change people's lives and improve the world. Who cares what AI is doing this week? And so that's what we reform out of the show too and the show really stuck and it's increased its audience by we just did the numbers i think it's about 1405 percent that we've done in the last four years so it was the greatest thing for the show i love the show more now than i love it ever before. But that was a moment where, again, that gratitude bottom, we decided that, you know, like you did where you helped other people. I said, well, screw it. If we're going to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars overnight, I'll just go help people

because that's all I got left. It's all that's left in the bank account now, helping other people. So hell with it. We're just going gonna do that and we'll figure out how to make it work yeah you had positive intentions and it wasn't about you it was about the other people and i had a similar experience starting power of positivity because after i had begun helping other people with their social media with their businesses with their marketing facebook launched pages and i was like well i well, I'm not going to make it about work, you know, because I was in this work-life balance thing where I'm like, well, I can't make it about work because then I'm going to be overworking. And so when I really reflected

on the last few years, I was like, it was really positivity that changed every area and embracing a more positive lifestyle. And so that's how Power of Positivity started. It was just kind of like a hobby. I just wanted to help people, tell them about what I was doing that was helping me and just sharing quotes and inspiration at the time. And we didn't monetize for like four years after that. It was just us every day posting consistently and helping people. And I think when you come from that perspective, the sky's the limit because you're moving with a serving attitude versus a selfish attitude. Yeah. We talked about that in leadership, servant leadership. We talked about that in business, entrepreneurs, you know, serving other people, helping other people achieve their goals.

It makes all the difference in the world. So there you go. Any final thoughts or tell people to pitch out how they can onboard with you. Maybe they can reach out to you, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, I love Instagram. So positive Kristen on Instagram. I'm also on LinkedIn and Kristen Butler on LinkedIn. And so, yeah, I'm just all about helping people create a more positive lifestyle

so they can have a more positive mindset and really achieve those goals that are in their heart that feel like they're too much or that they're not possible because they're totally possible. And that's what brings me the most passion. There you go. Helping others, man. We've told some great stories here during the show. Thank you very much for coming on the show, Kristen. We really appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me, Chris. It was great.

I loved hearing all of your stories and you have some great advice as well. I love it. There you go. When you find yourself in those dark moments where you want to throw a pity party or you want to go, woe is me, best thing to do is get empowered, especially if you've got to advocate for other people and just say, what am I asking for right now? What should I be grateful for? And it really changes the whole paradigm shift.

And in my case, it helps for a lot of different things. And you need that empowerment to fight the battle that you're going to go through or whatever you're going through. But it makes all the difference because it puts that positive spin on it. So I love gratitude. And I'm glad that I've gotten really good at it. As you mentioned, you know, I seem to be good at it now. But I didn't used to be good at it, but I practiced a lot because life tends to throw us off.

So there you go. That's what it is. It's just practice. We all just need to practice. Yeah. I could do with less practice life. You know, I got this down. Can we stop doing this lesson already?

Anyway, I'm just kidding. Cancer and dogs. What can you do? And people. So there you go. Thanks, Christopher, for coming on the show. It's, you know, it's part of the gig. One of the things I looked at, and I used to say this all the time with my other dog, was this's part of the gig i one of the things i looked at and i used to say this all the time with my other dog was this is part of the gig you go into it knowing that there's a high

probability this is going to happen so if it's part of the gig you you've you bought into it you accepted the risk you mitigated it and you you your job is to get as much love and care and curation that you can to make another spirit enjoy the time that they have. You know that it's going to be a 12 to 15 year run, 10 year, if you're lucky. Be happy that you got whatever time you got. And I remember after the loss of my dog, I don't want to make this show all about me, but I want to use this as a good example for people to blueprint off of. But I remember thinking about how much time I lost and there was a lot of drinking that went on with my last dog when she had cancer. And there were so many moments I missed and time I missed in burying her before she was buried in my head and worrying about it, crying about it and drinking over it and hangovers. And when really I should have been spending more

time with her and just making more moments. And I think, you know, if you're a family and your children, your, your wife or husband, your significant other, your loved one, your mother, your father, you know, whoever you have in your life, you know, you can't get that time back. And so spending that time in appreciating them and having gratitude for them and realizing the value of your life. Because I think one thing we learned from 2020 is people can be taken from you in an instant. They can walk out that door in the morning and some sort of accident can happen or something and they're gone. And so being in that moment of constant gratitude, like with what you do in a spouse to the journal, I think it's really important because then you have those moments captured and you have

those values and you're not being dismissive of them and you'll appreciate it more. So folks, order up the book, wherever fine books are sold, the three minute happiness journal, create happy habits, change your brain, transform your life. Appreciate it more. So folks, order up the book, wherever fine books are sold. The 3-Minute Happiness Journal. Create happy habits. Change your brain. Transform your life. And I can guarantee you it'll make a difference for you. Thanks to Kristen for coming on the show.

Thanks to Ron for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, 4Chest, Chris Foss. LinkedIn.com, 4Chest, Chris Foss. This will be on the big LinkedIn newsletter, so subscribe to that. And all the other places we're on the internet. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other and be gratitude and happy and all that good stuff thanks for tuning in be good to each other stay safe and we'll see you guys next time and there you go