#62 How to Be a POSITIVE Person in a Negative Culture

Rachel Denning (00:00.814)
Good morning my friends. Man, it's still early morning. I've been up for a long time getting it done. Hitting my priorities, doing the things that really matter. If you don't have a solid morning routine, man, can I just encourage you with all my heart and soul to get a solid morning routine. Something you know you're gonna do, like plan it in advance so you get up.

and you're not kinda in your groggy morning head going, what should I do? And falling back asleep. Like get up, get going, know what you're working on, why you're working on it, be excited about it, and make things happen. It is such a powerful way to start your days and of course, go direct the course of your life. And if you need some help on that, I actually created a course years ago called How to Totally Transform Your Life Before Breakfast.

And it was built on this morning routine, this ritual that I've been using for 20, over 20 years. Holy guacamole. It just works and it's powerful and it's exciting. It's awesome. When you start your days like that, it really helps them go better. So get on that thing. Man, life is so fun and exciting. I had an incredible...

event I went to a training out in California that was just so awesome. Some great people, great friends and learning great stuff and then coaching, coaching like crazy. It's going amazing, getting new clients. My schedule is all filled up. and things are awesome. I got a few slots left. So if you want to, if you're ready to level up your life, it is such a joy. Okay. I can't even tell you. And like, you know this, right?

It is such a joy to help other people. I hope you're doing something every day that is fulfilling and exciting for you that helps other people. Something, anything, even, of course, if you're a parent, you're doing that. But remember that in all the annoyances and the chaos and all the craziness. Remember why you're doing it. Every day we ought to be doing things that are helping other people. It is such a joy.

Rachel Denning (02:24.526)
and so fulfilling. All right, my friends, you ready? and I'm so stoked, you guys, woo! We're going backpacking in North Carolina in a day, two days. Like, so stoked! I love these stuff, love doing the trips, love doing the adventures. And, man, I'm just crazy excited about this big backpacking trip with youth up in the mountains, and then looking forward to the...

the couples trip to Thailand, you guys should come with us. It's gonna be amazing. All right, you ready? Today, we are talking about how to be positive in a negative world.

Whoa. And this is huge. It's huge. And it keeps getting more important. It's amazing. You think the world is so negative and pessimistic and dark and it keeps getting more negative and culturally culturally getting negative and there's just negativity all around and people are just drowning in the darkness. And then I've been there. So like this, you've heard part of my story, my journey through listening to podcasts. Like I was in a place where I really struggled.

with positivity and optimism. I really did. Because all I could see was negativity. And I was surrounded by it. Even at a younger age when there was divorces and fighting going on at home and poverty, I was surrounded in that. And as a kid, you're just like, you're happy to play with whatever you got. You start getting older, you start realizing how much darkness and negativity and.

struggle and challenge and trial. just it gets it gets around you and it gets in you like literally can saturate your soul with negativity. You guys know what I'm talking about, right? And you get around people that are just constantly negative. They just have this unbelievable propensity to be to be negative. Like how can you be so negative and they're just constantly negative, right?

Rachel Denning (04:38.126)
And we're surrounded by you guys. It's everywhere. It's in the media. It's in our minds. It's in our houses, in the music, it's in the movies. It is all around us. And here's the danger. Negativity dulls your capacity for greatness.

Boom, let that sink in. That negativity, that darkness, it dulls your capacity for greatness and it starts to squelch and hinder your potential.

and it literally begins to darken everything in your life. When there's negativity in your mind and saturated in your soul, it doesn't matter what's going on or what's good or what's around you. It starts to darken everything because it's like walking around with a welding helmet on, right? You have this welding mask on, you can't hardly see anything and you're just walking around and everything you try to look at looks dark. So my friends, let's...

Do this thing, let's be positive. When I made this shift and this change, actually started when I was 16 years old, somebody handed me a copy of a book called The Power of Positive Thinking. I think obviously they knew that I needed it. And I did, I did. And it started to transform the way I see life. And now I am a pure, bona fide optimist. And I'm positive. And my friends, let's make this really clear from the beginning.

being positive in a negative situation in a negative world is not naive, it's leadership and it's a choice. We can choose positivity. Whoa. Right. I love this. and we can like wherever you are right now and whatever you're doing, take a moment and just shout for joy that life is good. Even when it's hard, even when it's challenging, even when you're facing.

Rachel Denning (06:49.005)
disaster and failure and hardship and hurt and loss.

Shout for joy that you literally right now, you're listening to this. If you're taking a breath that's giving you another moment of life, shout for joy. I want to shout right now to the microphone, a warning here for your ears. Woo hoo! Right? We're alive! Shout for joy that you can take another breath and be here for another moment. It's a privilege of being alive.

I love it. But we get into trouble, my friends, when we start to whine, complain, and cringe, and come up with excuses and alibis of why it won't work, and you can't work it, and you can't believe it. Right? And we allow ourselves to think negatively about hard times. Here's what blows my mind.

is we've gotten such, we've been trained and conditioned into negativity so much, people are whining and crying about the good times.

Like for most of us, our lifestyle is really, really good.

Rachel Denning (08:09.421)
And we don't even realize that. Here's what's fascinating. We often don't even realize how good we have it because one, we lack the contrast and the actual contact with people who are having a really hard time. Like if you go into a refugee camp or you go in the shanty towns where I've been in Casablanca or into the ghettos, the projects, the...

the slums, the leprosy colonies in India where I've been and the just the invasiones, they're just these these little huts, this group of people have nothing in Peru and so they go into the desert and they just claim a piece of the desert and build their little shacks. Like if you don't have regular physical literal contact with the real challenges of life in this world, it's easy.

to forget what hard actually looks like and you start calling easy hard. Isn't that fascinating? And we start looking at our life and we start going, things are so bad, it's so tough. And we start to whine and cry and complain and despair about things that in perspective aren't that bad. And we literally, man, I meet with people all the time, they're complaining and crying about.

Good times, let alone the bad times, right? And we do, I know you guys have hard times, I know you're facing some unbelievable challenges.

I have the privilege of coaching and mentoring wonderful, wonderful human beings. Like I love what I get to do. Holy cow, I love getting what I get to do. And even the best among us, all of us face some incredibly hard times. And some of the people I work with have faced incredible disasters and challenges. And I mean, from every range of hurt.

Rachel Denning (10:17.037)
And I get the privilege to work with people who have been through total disasters and even to the point of contemplating or attempting suicide even. Like when things get so dark and despair comes in so heavily, it gets that bad. So what I'm saying is I've been around the world, worked with people who've been through hard times and I myself have been through some incredibly hard times. But we cannot allow our fears,

and our worries to undermine our confidence and to undo everything we're working on doing.

Rachel Denning (10:56.845)
Right? And we sit there and we just float and drift. I was reading this morning and just caught this idea of like, look, any log, any log can drift with the current. It takes a man and it takes a woman to go against the current and the tide. There literally is a tide of negativity in our culture and our society. When our media.

and to fight against the tide and to stand up and be counted and to shout for joy. You with me? Like whoo! But we fail to reach out. We fail to help ourselves in this abundance of goodness that we're surrounded with and we just, we focus on the lack and we focus on the pain. And we've got to do that. And again, I'm going to repeat it. It is not naive to be positive in the negative world. It's leadership. Well, what about the past?

What about the things that have gone bad? I mean, what about all the things, the bad things that happened? I've tried that before. That's, that's what's interesting. That was one thing that, that really took a big toll on me was thinking negatively about the past. And my friends, there's nothing, there's nothing, not a single thing that any of us can do to change the past. It is gone. What happened yesterday, it might as well have happened a million years ago. It is gone. You cannot change the past. The only thing you can do,

It changed the way you see the past. Like Emerson said, your eyes are in your forehead, not your hind head. Right? We look forward and if we ever look back, it is to glance back for perspective and lessons and ways to live better in the present and in the future. If we are constantly looking back, especially with negativity and pessimism and darkness.

It literally is going to prevent us from living a positive present and future. So then we begs the question my friends, how does one stay positive in a world that is so negative and honestly when it's so easy and tempting to be negative? It is isn't it you guys? It's easy. It's easy to slip into that. It's easy to look at the negative things.

Rachel Denning (13:19.757)
It's actually really easy to become a cynic.

Think about that. Look around. Right? Look around. We could just as easily have a podcast episode here about how negative things are, how bad things are, how dark things are, how so many people, you can't trust them, and the world's gone down the drain, in the toilet, and all these dark things that happen. It's so easy to do that. It's so easy to see that.

Have you ever had this experience where you get together with friends and the conversation quickly turns to how bad things are and then that thing can go on for hours and hours of just like how bad everything is. It's easy and tempting to do that. But like William Jordan said, he said an optimist is a person who has succeeded in associating with humanity for some time without becoming a cynic. Close quote.

Whoa, right. Optimism is associating with humanity and not becoming cynical and dark and negative, but it's all around us. Even to, you know, it's in us and it's ingrained in our mindsets and our heartsets and, and saturate. I'm going to keep saying that it's saturated our souls. You see it everywhere. You even see it in humor. Like for some reason it's become cool to roast people.

Right? I always call it toasting or baking, broiling, you know, it's become cool to roast people. It's not cool. So even in humor, negativity has come out at the expense of others, right? The humor, the humor has come out at the expense of others and negativity, but it's not cool. It's not cool at all. What's cool is helping people, lifting people, praising people, building people, especially those

Rachel Denning (15:20.269)
who are tempted to roast and to focus on the negative. And I want to challenge you, my friends, to join me in becoming and being a great force for good, in radiating light. The actual truth is, here, let this sink in. I hope this hits home really hard for you like it did for me. We can't not, I know it's a double negative, we can't not radiate. It's impossible.

You are radiating constantly, endlessly, always. So am I. And we don't radiate what we do, we don't radiate what we say. We radiate most who we are. At every moment of every day, you are radiating what you are.

And here's the coolest and most exciting piece of that is we get to choose. We get to choose who we are and we can make those changes from the inside out and from the outside in, but we get to choose who we are and who we're becoming, but we cannot opt out. We, it is impossible to opt out of radiation, right? We're causally radiating. And so what we're absorbing and what we're radiating, we've got to have that filter up and, and.

filter what we absorb and push out the goodness we want to radiate into the world. Right. And so like we have to, we have to make this conscious, deliberate choice to radiate goodness. So join me in becoming a lighthouse in the darkness and these smashing violent waves and crazy dark storms that are out there and just radiate this light like the lighthouse. Like, no, we're going to choose optimism. We're going to choose happiness.

We're gonna choose positivity and we're gonna spread it because positivity is infectious. Infectious, there's a better word than that. It's contagious. It spreads. Negativity spreads faster, I think, but positivity spreads as well, so let's spread that stuff. So how do we do it, ready? I'm gonna give you a few comparisons here to see which one just really hits home with you. It's light.

Rachel Denning (17:35.373)
Okay. Positivity is light. And so we have to fuel the light. And I think, you know, let's go with it's light and, and warmth. And so we have to fuel it. Isn't it interesting that there's no real source of darkness, but only the absence of light. And whenever we flip on a light, darkness flees. You walk into a dark room and all you gotta do is flip on that light and darkness goes away. It's gone. It's eliminated. Isn't that powerful?

The beautiful. So as far as I understand, and as I've read and studied, like there's no real source of darkness. It's just the absence of light. Negativity then is the darkness. It's the absence of light. Now there seems to be sources of negativity where people are constantly talking about it, spreading it and sharing it. What's interesting is there's a lot of that negativity and the reason they're spreading it, sharing it and saturated in it is because they lack positivity.

So in a sense, right, well in the darkness you can feel it. You can get just absorbed in it and just saturated in it. There it is again, right? We have to keep the light on and we have to feel the light. So I wanna submit the idea that it's more like a wood burning fire and a bonfire in my case than it is a light switch. Some people say, hey turn on the light switch. And it can be, it can be that source of electricity and power and boom, bring it in. But I love the idea of the fire.

because you have to feed it and you have to protect it from being doused in the flood of whining and complaining and belittling and roasting and pessimism and negativity. There's just this constant barrage. It is just the downpouring storm and the tide. Like I mentioned earlier, it's this tide of negativity. We have to protect the fire and feed it.

And we have to feed it so much. you guys, how cool is this? I didn't even think about it till right now. I just happened to be reading in the Old Testament this morning and came across the story of Elijah where he douses the fire, right? With the priest of Baal, I think it is, where they're calling down fire from.

Rachel Denning (19:56.461)
from heaven for their God to burn the altar, right? The one on the altar. And he's like, let's just douse the thing and just just soaks the wood and the altar and the trenches around it. Everything's filled with water. He calls down fire. The fire comes down, consumes all the wet wood and the altar and the stones and you know, just sucks up all the water in the trenches even. That fits perfectly. I didn't even think about that till right now. It fits perfectly. We need to have so much fire going on that it just consumes.

and dries up all that flood of negativity. And we've gotta keep, we've gotta feed it because otherwise it's just gonna, the light'll burn out. Right, and so whining and murmuring and complaining ought to be foreign languages, my friends, in which we are not fluent. But here's our greatest challenge, and I see this all the time. Our greatest challenge is our input.

and our minds and our bodies and our spirits are reacting to input. In fact, science is showing that within a couple of minutes, your mind is releasing chemicals into your body based on the input is consuming. Check that out, right? That is so phenomenal. I love that we live in this time and age where we can literally watch the brain do what it does. And so your brain and my brain within just a couple of minutes of input is releasing chemicals.

into our bodies that are related to the input. Does this make sense? So if you're listening to a song or watching a movie or you're having some kind of stimulus that's positive or negative, it starts to release those things. So stress or negativity, right? Or fear. So you watch the news and it's fear -based and it's negative.

And so your body, you start to consume it, right? Your mind consumes it, it starts releasing, I think it's cortisol is the right, the chemical there that's for stress and negativity and fear. And it releases into your body. And you actually can become addicted to that chemical. The same is true with happiness and joy. You're listening to some music, watching a movie, something wonderful, positive. You're sitting on the lakeside or the beach or a mountain or a beautiful area and just sucking in that.

Rachel Denning (22:16.845)
wonderful positivity and it starts to release the releases the chemicals even smiling. If you held a big do it right now. Have this big cheesy grin like sit up straight or stand up if you can and just put on a big cheesy smile. Do it right now. Come on smile. Big cheesy smile. And if you hold that smile just hold it for a moment and watch what your brain starts to release good things in your body. It literally does it. You create that and then what it releases into your body.

You know helps your feelings. It totally does like this is science. This isn't like voodoo magic like this is science and it releases that and your body responds to it but but most of us and this is fascinating when I'm When I'm working with individuals and speaking and teaching and training and mentoring coaching around the world Like I come across this all the time people who are struggling with positivity and struggling and they're dwelling in darkness almost without exception

I can call it out. Like I can call it out. I'm like, I know what kind of music you're listening to. What kind of music you're listening to. Wait, did I just say that twice? What kind of movies you're watching? What kind of media you're consuming? Like I know with adults that are really fearful and negative, they're watching the news all the time. Boom, just call it out, right?

And here's what I want to give you this challenge right now. I'm going to throw it out there. I want you to stop watching the news. The news is negative and I want you to stop watching the news. It stirs up drama. It intentionally stirs up drama. They've got us addicted to cortisol and they stir up negativity. Stop, stop watching the news. Now here, here your mind's going, but I have to know what's going on and I'll be ignorant. I got to trust me. If there's something you need to know, people will tell you about it. You're going to hear it. Okay.

my goodness, you don't have to consume it as you're up. You're gonna hear it. And if there's something significant important, you'll hear about it and then you can research it. Otherwise, stay away from the news. And if you don't trust me, if you don't believe me, just try it. Are you least willing to try it? Like trust me on this one. This is one of those times you, the mentor coach trusts the situation where you're like, just try it. Do a media fast, okay? No news for 30 days or 60 days or 90 days. I'm dead serious. Like don't, don't do it. And a lot of you are in this habit, like you check it first thing in the morning.

Rachel Denning (24:45.005)
Check it throughout the day and check it at night. So literally, first thing in the morning you turn it on and last thing before bed you turn it on. You got news news, you literally bookend your day with negativity. And of course, I'm telling you, this is science. You consume negativity and your brain produces the chemicals of input. And so first thing in the morning you get negativity, releases chemicals. Last thing before bed, chemicals, negativity. Like this stuff is real.

You know what's interesting? Your food affects your mood too. It really does. If you're eating junk food, it's affecting your mood. It's actually harder to be positive, optimistic when you're eating junk food and not even just junk food, just fake food. If you're eating processed foods and these chemicals that are in there, like it again, science, this is all research based. My friends, you could geek out on this and get all this research. Like, like the very first things when somebody comes to me and they're saying they're depressed or anxious.

first thing I'm looking at is their input, what they're eating and what they're consuming. And it's, it's, it's like, it's science. It means it's there. So, and one of my coaching clients, just awesome, love, love, love his family. They're the best. And they realized, you know, we were allowing TV to, to affect our lives too much. And so, you know, I challenged them to take the TV, get rid of it. And they went and put it in their storage unit. They took all the TVs out of their house, went and put them in the storage unit.

I've been challenging families to do that for two decades. Rachel and I have never had a TV in our family. And we decided in marriage, like, no, we want to focus on learning and books and other things and as many good things as there on TV. And there are, there are fantastic movies and things on there. I even have my students when I'm doing our classes and our discussions, we'll do, we'll watch movies and discuss them. It's awesome. But for as much good as there is on there, there's so much negativity.

And you guys, those TV series and TV shows, they are strategically designed. The people who write these things and create these things, they are really strategic about getting in your head and messing with your emotions. That's why they do it. That's how they do it. Think about it. When you know these TV series and you get to the end and they just leave you this cliffhanger, you have to watch the next one. And they're intentionally trying to get in your head.

Rachel Denning (27:12.109)
And they're good at it. They're masters. Like this is what they do full time. Their world is to create something that gets in your head. That's what they do, right? And you know that. I mean, it's obvious. You watch a movie and you're just sucked into it. Whoa! I mean, that's what they're doing. But we've got to be more careful about just allowing people to get in our heads. Music, movies, books.

magazines, etc. commercials, advertising, etc. etc. So media fast, my friend from social media. Social media has gotten control of your life. Your music is negative. Like even my own kids will turn on a song, like this is a great song. And I'll listen to the lyrics. I'll be like, guys, do you hear what this is saying? Like, no, we don't. We're not paying attention to that. We just like the song. I'm like, well, wait a minute. Did you hear what that just said? It is so negative. And it gets, it's a catchy, right? They try to make music catchy.

because the more catchy it is, the more it sticks in your head, the more you listen to it, the more you consume it. And they get this catchy song and they're not paying attention to lyrics, right? Is what they say. And they get this catchy song and all of a sudden they're just rolling along and they're playing those lyrics in their head again and again and again. And it affects us massively. Okay, second metaphor. Optimism is like a muscle. You gotta exercise it. We need to be working this thing out. We need to do our...

Regular exercises, right? Exercise only works if you do it regularly, consistently, vigorously. So you go to the gym every once a while, once a week, it's not gonna do much for you. You have to schedule it, you have to plan it, you have to put it on your calendar. You have to check it off your to -do list. The same with optimism. Make it a muscle, exercise this stuff. Look for it, live for it, see it, feed it. Whenever you feel something negative or think something negative, I genuinely want you to stop yourself.

and replace it with positivity. So that's the key. You can't just stop it. You have to stop it and replace it with something positive. So if you catch yourself saying something negative about life, about yourself, especially about yourself, about other people, then I want you to hold yourself accountable, police yourself, stop yourself and say, if you said, I'm so dumb, stop that right there and say, no, I can learn anything. I can learn anything. I can learn anything. I can figure out anything. I can do this.

Rachel Denning (29:36.781)
Right? Stop and replace it and exercise this stuff. Again, I'm coming back to this, this idea presented negativity, dulls your capacity for greatness.

So exercise positivity. If you catch yourself, stop. Ask somebody to put you in an armbar and make you scream an apology to yourself and do it to them. Like, hey, no, stop. And if there's negative people around you in a joyful, playful way, be like, hey, stop. Stop being so negative. You keep being negative. I'm seriously going to put you in an armbar. I'm going to put you in a submission hold and hold you there until you scream an apology to yourself.

You gotta stop, stop the flood of negativity. Build an arc of optimism and joyfully float across the floods of negativity, my friend.

One more metaphor, batteries. Batteries have a positive side and a negative side. And of course there needs both sides, right? There has to be both. It's fascinating that it's the both side, it's opposition in all things that gives us perspective, right? But if you put it in the wrong way, you put that negative side on the wrong side, it just doesn't work. The same is true in life. We've got to get that positivity.

into our worlds. So we can have the tap into the abundance of happiness and excitement and opportunities that are all around us there. There for the taking my friends. We can have it we can feel positive optimistic excited all the time. It's a choice. It literally is a choice. Even in the most negative situations, there is positivity.

Rachel Denning (31:33.613)
Read books like The Hiding Place and Man's Search for Meaning and There Was Light, right? Three phenomenal books. Goodness, even Unbroken, right? Those are all World War II books where they were in some of the darkest situations ever and still found positivity. We can do it. We have to just practice it. Everything's trainable. Everything is trainable. Optimism is trainable. It's learnable. So feed that fire, fuel it, protect it.

exercise those muscles, the optimism muscles, and be diligent and deliberate and intentional about it. Set some alarms if you have to, lots of alarms if you have to, and set up consequences and catch yourself. If you're negative, stop it and replace it. And watch what happens. Watch what happens to you, the way you feel about yourself, the way you feel about life, the way you feel about your circumstances and situations, the way you feel about other people.

and watch what happens to other people. Watch what happens to the people around you when you start to radiate optimism. it's amazing. You guys, I love you. Awesome is always an option. Reach upward.

Rachel Denning (32:54.189)
Hey everybody, thanks so much for listening to this episode. I hope you got a lot of value out of it and found some things that you can apply to your life right away. Hey, I'm being totally sincere when I say I live to help you live your extraordinary life. So I hope you'll reach out to me if you have any questions or let me know how I can help you in any important area of your life. And in fact, you know, this podcast is brought to you by the School of Awesome Sauce monthly coaching program. Take advantage of that, get in there. It's the -

best way to get a breakthrough to the next level so you can level up your health, your spirituality, your emotions, your mind, your relationships, your finances, business, every part of your life. Just get in there where you have a coach and a mentor, you have a supportive community to make things happen. So jump in there, take advantage of this, try it out, get in there with us and level up your life. See you on the inside. Reach upward.