The Mindset Mentor - Stop Being So Negative

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. And if you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you love this podcast, please do me a favor. Go ahead and give us a rating review on whatever platform you listen to us on, whether that's Spotify, Apple Podcasts, whatever it might be. The more positive reviews that we get for this podcast, the more that those platforms show this podcast to other people who don't listen to us. And that way we're able to impact more people's lives and this podcast is able to grow. So if you would do that, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. Today, we're going to be talking

Starting point is 00:00:41 about how to change all of those negative thoughts that just run through your head. But before we do it, why do negative thoughts exist in the first place? Have you ever thought about that? When you think about your life, when you think about the negative thoughts that you might have about yourself, when you think about negative thoughts you might have about somebody else, why does the negative thought exist in the first place? And what makes a thought negative or a thought positive? Well, I've got a couple different thoughts for you guys to kind of help you out a little bit and kind of dive into what it might be. So when we look at negative thoughts, I think that it's a little bit of nature. I also think it's a little bit of nurture. I think that it's actually natural for people to be negative.

Starting point is 00:01:26 I do believe that there are some people that are just naturally more positive. Yippity-doo-dah, that sounds amazing. Wish I was that way, right? But most people are not that way. And I think what it comes down to is negative thoughts or what is seen as quote-unquote negative is your brain's way of trying to protect itself. It's your brain's way of trying to look for potential things in the future and keep you safe from them. Now you might say like, how does that make any sense? Well, think about this for

Starting point is 00:01:57 instance. There's a part of your brain called the amygdala. The amygdala is a part of your brain that's one of the oldest parts of your brain. And it is inside of your limbic system. It's a little tiny thing that's inside of your limbic system. And basically what it does is it puts fears into you. It creates the fears and keeps you alive. So it's a really, really important piece of our brain that kept our species alive for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years, depending on which scientists and archaeologists that you really speak to. But hundreds of thousands of years, at least,

Starting point is 00:02:30 they kept our species alive. Why? Because it was able to put a fear of like, hey, you hear rustling in a bush, that means danger. Hey, are things get a little bit too quiet when you're walking through the forest? Maybe that means danger. Maybe there's something around. Maybe there's a jaguar. And the reason why it's so quiet is because that jaguar, all of the other animals have seen it, they've cleared off and now it got really silent. And so our brain has this amygdala and has different parts of our brain to actually go out and search for things that are problems, quote unquote problems, that could be potential threats to us. Now, when we live inside of the year that we live in right now and the world that we live in right now, I live inside of a house. I'm inside of our office, inside of our studio right now. There are

Starting point is 00:03:08 no potential threats. I could stay in this room that I am in right now forever, and I would be completely safe. I could live here for the next 30 years of my life, never leave, and I would be completely safe. Unless like, you know, crazy things happen. You know, maybe a lightning strike comes down and hits me. Maybe some tornado comes through and hits the house. But besides that, I'm completely safe. And in this moment where I'm completely safe, my amygdala still exists. So what does it do when it has nothing to worry about like a jaguar or, you know, swimming in water? Maybe there's something that touches your foot and you think that that's a shark. There's all these things that it could bring up as potential fears. Well,

Starting point is 00:03:48 if it doesn't have any potential fears, because I'm sitting inside of this really safe house, inside of a really safe neighborhood, inside of a really safe room, it starts to create problems. And so what happens is our brain will naturally go towards, what if this person screws me over? Well, you know, you probably shouldn't do that. Actually, you're too dumb to be able to do this. You're not good enough. You're not smart enough. You're not pretty enough. And it makes me not take action outside of my comfort zone because there's potential,

Starting point is 00:04:12 quote unquote, potential threat that's outside of it. And we deem those thoughts as negative versus positive thoughts. And so knowing this, knowing that our brain will naturally do this, knowing that it will, it will run rampant if we don't control it, it at least allows us to understand why our mind is the way that it is. So that when we dive in how to actually get rid of the negative thoughts, it'll make it much easier for us.

Starting point is 00:04:35 So when we're talking about your automatic negative thoughts, as they're called, your aunt's automatic negative thoughts that just tend to pop up in your head and you're like, where the hell did that just come from? And you might not really even know where it came from. I don't know about you guys, but there's times I've said this many times before on the podcast where a thought will come into my head and I'm like, whose thought was that? Like, that's not my voice. That's not my, that doesn't sound like something I would say, but it just somehow pops up into my head. I'm like, okay, that's pretty interesting, but it's not my thought. I'm not going to identify with that thought. How do we get past these ants, these automatic negative thoughts? Well,

Starting point is 00:05:08 the first thing let's talk about since we're already talking about it is the mind. You've heard me say this. And one of my favorite analogies for all of this stuff and figuring out what our mind is like is your mind is like a garden. And I always say that if you plant strawberry seeds into a garden, you can never expect that you're going to produce tomatoes. Like you cannot put strawberries in the ground and expect that tomatoes are naturally going to grow from strawberry seeds. It's not going to happen. Well, if you're constantly thinking negative in your head, if you're allowing your brain and your mind to run rampant, you're not pulling it back in, reminding yourself of all of the beautiful things that do exist in your life, all the things that you are grateful for, all of the positive

Starting point is 00:05:47 stuff. It will naturally go in search for those negatives. And so just as you can't put strawberries in the ground and expect that tomatoes are going to grow, well, you can't allow your mind to be negative all of the time and expect that somehow you're just going to have this positive life. That's not going to happen. And so you have to imagine your mind like a garden. And you are the only person that can tend to this garden. There's no one else that can come to this garden, right? Imagine you have a garden in your backyard. You're the only person that can tend to this garden. And so what do you do? You take care of it. You water it. You make sure it's getting the right amount of sunlight. You put the strawberry seeds in. You water the

Starting point is 00:06:22 strawberry seeds. You make sure you take care of them. You make sure if there's any weeds that pop up, you pull the weeds and you take care of that garden. Well, are you taking care of that garden the same way that you would take care of your mind or are you taking care of it better than your mind? By pulling all the weeds, the negative thoughts, by planting it, by making sure that you get everything right. So when you look at the garden analogy and you start thinking about that, you're like, man, the way he just described taking care of a garden is better than I take care of my mind. So when a negative thought pops up in your head, do you replace it with a positive thought? When the weeds grow in your garden, of course they will grow in your garden. They always grow. That's just what weeds do.

Starting point is 00:07:00 You can pull them or you can leave them. If you want to keep your garden, your mind as clean and positive as possible, you're going to have to pull all of the weeds, aka the negative thoughts, as soon as they pop up. That is your job. There's no one else around you that can do it. If you notice yourself talking trash to yourself, then you're going to have to be the person to change that narrative the way that you speak to yourself. And I always say this, you will never speak to yourself, you would never speak to someone that you love the same way that you speak to yourself. And I always say this, you will never speak to yourself, you would never speak to someone that you love the same way that you speak to yourself. So many people are so hard on themselves and they talk so much trash to themselves and then they wonder why they don't have the life that they want because it all starts in your mind.

Starting point is 00:07:37 Everything comes from your thoughts, your actions, your results come from your thoughts, what's going on in your mind. So if your mind, if you're trying to create this positive environment, if you're trying to create an amazing life, but in your mind there's just your thoughts, what's going on in your mind. So if your mind, if you're trying to create this positive environment, if you're trying to create an amazing life, but in your mind, there's just negative thoughts, negative thoughts, negative thoughts, talking down to yourself, judging people, all of that, you're not going to have the life that you want. So you start to think about this. You know, if you judge somebody else, if you take this outside of your own head and you judge somebody and you see somebody, maybe you don't even say it to them out loud, but you just think it in your head. Replace that with three positive things about that person. Pull up those weeds and water

Starting point is 00:08:08 the garden. If you get cut off on the road, you get pissed off. You can yell at them. You can allow that person cutting you off on the road to piss you off, to change your state. You grip the wheel. You get really pissed off. You get mad about it. You can allow that to happen. That is your prerogative if you want to. Or you can just say, hey, maybe they got to poop. Just let it go. Make a joke out of it because you don't know why that person's in a hurry. That person might be in a hurry because they got to go see somebody that they love in the hospital. You never know. And so when you get cut off, you can either go down one route of being pissed off, being mad, tailgate, you know, right, get on their, you know, just right on their tail and just get as close as you possibly can and honk your horn

Starting point is 00:08:48 and get mad at them. Or you can be like, hey, dude looks like he's in a hurry, must gotta poop. It's completely up to you. But those two different decisions are going to make you have a completely different state in your mind. That's the sound of another sale on Shopify, the all-in-one e-commerce platform to start, run, and grow your business. Shopify gives entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big businesses. So upstarts and startups and established businesses alike can sell everywhere and synchronize online and in-person sales and effortlessly stay informed. Scaling your business is a journey of endless possibility. And one of the things that I love about Shopify is it has all the tools and resources to make it easy for any business to succeed from down the street to around the

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Starting point is 00:09:59 Go to shopify.com slash dial right now. Shopify.com slash dial. Your mind is like a wild monkey that's just jumping around, throwing stuff, breaking things. And you can let it jump around and break everything, or you can decide that you're going to put it in a cage and make sure that you are in charge of it. I always give this example because I love this example. But if you were to see something, I hear this from all the time from people where they're like, I can't control my, Rob, I can't control my mind. I can't control my mind. I can't control my thoughts. I can't

Starting point is 00:10:26 control my mind. I can't control a positive and negative. And they act like they can't control it. What I've told people before in the past is imagine I'm sitting in front of you and just out of nowhere, my right arm just starts wiggling and it's wiggling and I can't, and it starts, you know, it starts raising. It's kind of like what I would do with my hands. It's like the arms going all over the place. It's wiggling. For those of you guys that aren't looking at the video, you can't see my arm, but it's wiggling all over the place and it's going crazy. Just imagine my arm is just going crazy like this. It's going crazy. It's going crazy. Would you look at me and be like, Rob, the hell is going on with your arm? And I was like, I just can't control it. I just

Starting point is 00:10:59 can't control it. It does this thing. You'd be like, you might want to get that checked out, right? But that doesn't happen. Why? Because you control your arm. Why do you control your arm? Because it's part of your body. Well, what's the difference between your arm and your mind then? Because your mind, your brain, is also part of your body. So why don't you control it? Why don't you learn how to control it? Why don't you get better at controlling it? Because you can either control your mind or your mind can control you. And so that's the first piece of your negative thoughts. You have to start thinking about that. The second piece of your negative thoughts,

Starting point is 00:11:30 we got the mind. The second piece is your body. Harvard did a study and found out that people's thoughts and feelings changed based off of what their physiology was. Think of that for a second. People's thoughts and feelings change based off of the state of their body what their physiology was and i'll give you a great example i want you to think about this i want you to imagine in your mind somebody who is depressed somebody who's really sad and i want you to think about and describe out loud if you want to in your mind, whatever it is you want to do, describe what that person's physiology would look like if they're depressed, if they're sad. What would their physiology look like? I bet there's, you know, their shoulders would probably be down, their head would be down, they would be talking slow, they'd probably be talking low,

Starting point is 00:12:22 they'd probably be talking like this. And they would just be that, that we know shoulders down, head down, talking slow, talking low, breathing probably really shallow. All of those things, we just described what a depressed person probably would look like if they were in their state of depression or in their state of sadness, whatever it might be for them. How can we all think the exact same thing? Ah, because somebody's physiology is going to dictate the way that they feel and, you know, their thoughts and their feelings as well. Now, if I said, describe to me how a confident person would walk in a room, what do you think it would be? Would they be, you know, coiled over?

Starting point is 00:13:08 Would their back be like a C? Would their shoulders be over? No. What would it be? They'd be straight up. Shoulders would be back. Their chin would probably be up. They would talk louder.

Starting point is 00:13:17 They would talk more confident. They would be, you could hear the difference between talking like this and talking like this. There's a difference between them. difference between talking like this and talking like this. There's a difference between them. And so it shows you that your physiology actually has a massive influence on the way that you think, but also the way that you feel. And it's not just me saying this. Once again, this is a Harvard study that found this out. Describe to me what a happy person would look like. A happy person's body, would their arms be at their side? What would it look like? Or would

Starting point is 00:13:45 they be more expressive? Would they be happy? If you think about, if you think about somebody who's just like happy, they just got really good news, they're excited, they're going to have a completely different physiology from someone who is sad. And so you have to realize what you think influences your physiology, but your physiology also influences what you think. Why is this important? Because your physiology will change the chemicals in your brain and the chemicals in your brain will then change your physiology. It's not a one-way street. It's not like you just think thoughts and it goes to your body. And it's not just like you have your body and it just thinks thoughts. There's a constant conversation between your body and your brain at all points in time.

Starting point is 00:14:24 I'll give you an example, right? Let's say that you, uh, you ever had a sexual thought before? What happens? You have that sexual thought and without you even realizing it, there's now a communication between your brain and your body and your body starts to do things to prepare you for possible sexual experiences, right? And then what happens is your body then communicates back to your brain. And it's like, your brain's like, hey, body, are we feeling the same way I think

Starting point is 00:14:49 we're feeling? Yeah, we're feeling the same way I think we're feeling. Okay, maybe I should keep following these chemicals because I think we're on this path. And so you have to realize your physiology will change the chemicals in your brain. The chemicals in your brain will change your physiology. And so if you notice yourself having negative thoughts more often than you want to have negative thoughts, you've got to start to take a step back and look at two different things. What's going on in my mind? What am I thinking about? What am I saying to myself? What am I expressing out loud? And then on the other side of that, what does my body look like? You know, am I slouched over? Have I done anything today? You know, you usually don't feel

Starting point is 00:15:23 shit after a great workout. You usually feel amazing after a great workout, right? You might be tired, all that stuff. 30 minutes later though, you're like, man, I'm so glad that I did that. You usually don't feel like crap after a great workout. When do you usually feel like crap? When you've been on the couch all day, scrolling on Instagram, watching TV, not getting things done. So that shows you that the physiology of what it is that you do

Starting point is 00:15:46 and actions that you take now, but also the actions that you took 20 minutes ago, 30 minutes ago, 60 minutes ago, will influence how you feel in this moment. So when you're starting to notice negative thoughts come in your brain, you've got to notice your mind, what's going on in your mind. But you've also really got to remember, this is what most people forget, to check in with your body. What has your body been doing? How's your movement practice been through the day? How's your movement practice been? How's your workout routine? How's your eating? How's the drinking of water? Have you been drinking water? Have you been drinking beer? Have you been drinking Coke? Have you been having too much sugar? And you've got to realize that the body has a massive influence

Starting point is 00:16:21 on the way that you feel. Your blood sugar could be too low, and then you start to feel really crappy for the day. And so you've got to realize there's this constant communication back and forth. So if you want to get the negative thoughts out of your brain, you've got to check with your mind and then you've got to check with your body. And you've got to check on both of them and say, hey, do we need to make a change? Yes, we do. Okay, cool. This is a change that we're going to make. And if you do that, you'll start to notice slowly but surely you'll reprogram, repatting yourself. You reprogram your proud of yourself. And that is the most important thing for you to do, to grow this awareness and then to change it every single time that you notice yourself not on point.

Starting point is 00:16:53 And that is how you reprogram yourself to get the negative thoughts out of your head. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories and tag me at RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And once again, I'm going to leave the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you, and I hope that you have an amazing day.

The Mindset Mentor - Stop Being So Negative

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