How Positive Thinking Can Change Your Life and the Lives of Others | Kuda Biza | TEDxJCU

[Applause] we need to update the buyer and ADD baby Liam to it when I was a kid I used to believe that my father was a real life superhero when I was in second grade my home country Zimbabwe was struck by a severe drought that left millions of people hungry in fact take a look at this New York Times front page article southern Africa hit by its worst drought of the 20th century but instead of being defeated by the situation my father decided to put on his superhero suit and go out into action he volunteered in the food relief efforts and he would go and distribute food that was donated to us across the country when you'd come back home he would share stories from the field stories like how they arrived just in time at a village that barely had enough food supplies for one more day but then there were the sad stories some that still haunt me till this day like the story of a mother who was running down the road crying for help while clutching to the lifeless body of a four-year-old daughter who died moments earlier reflecting on my father's reflecting on my father's actions during the drought I always wondered how he was able to be a superhero during this time in fact I thought he was like Spider-Man like some sort of kindness bug head you know bitten him at some point and then one day I decided to ask him why he decided to dedicate his life to help others and these were his words he said he is it is because I have hope and I believe that things can get better he went on to explain to me that he defined hope as have only positive expectations and by so doing my Father revealed the source of his superhero Powers which is positive thinking positive thinking is one of the most powerful forces we all have at our disposal it is a mindset to see the good in every situation positive thinking is not about ignoring reality or pretending that everything is perfect in fact positive thinking is you just making the choice to look at the best in every situation and using that perspective to create positive change it is about finding Solutions rather than dwelling on problems now I see some of you are probably thinking okay this is all positive thinking stuff is great but how do we cultivate positive thinking in our lives well I'm going to share with you three ways how you could do that the first one is be aware of your thoughts you want to pay attention to what you think about right think you know just pay attention to the thoughts that go through your mind throughout the day are they positive or they're negative are they helpful or they're harmful when you find yourself thinking something that's negative instead of you dwelling on the negativity what you want to do is you want to quickly replace that negative thought with something more positive so I'll give you an example if you catch yourself thinking I don't think I'll be able to give that tedx talk what you can do is you can consciously replace that thought with something a little bit more positive something like I don't know how to deliver good tedx yet but with practice I'll be able to do it so that's number one number two you can cultivate Positive Thinking by practicing gratitude gratitude causes the brain to release those good hormones right dopamine and serotonin and when your brain releases higher levels of dopamine dopamine and serotonin you get to you know enjoy the benefits of that like reduced stress it lowers your anxiety and it just gives you that ability to attack the day with a more positive vibe I've Incorporated positive thinking and practicing gratitude in my life by doing what I call gratitude in five where each morning as part of my morning routine I spend five minutes journaling things that I'm grateful for now what that does is that I get to start the day on a very positive note but more importantly it then sets the tone for the rest of the day so when a situation comes up I'm more likely to look at it from a positive perspective especially when things don't go according to plan now the third and final tip I'm going to share with you guys on how you can cultivate positive thinking in your lives is by surrounding yourselves with positive pause and very few negative nancies so we want more of the positive minded people and less of the negative minded people right positive minded people as we all know are optimistic we need a lot of optimism in our life they're also resilient right they they can push through difficult times because they're optimistic but more importantly they're supportive so if you're pursuing a goal if you're pursuing a dream positive people can then really help you push through that when things get difficult while negative people on the other hand they're going to be draining they can be toxic but more importantly they can discourage you from actually pursuing your goal so more positive pause in your life when I look at this picture of me in the left when I was in second grade I'll never forget this picture it was right around the time this article was actually published and on this day you'd get your picture taken and you'd have to go in front of a class and share with your class what your life's dream is um so my classmates would go and they'll share how they want to be doctors how they want to be lawyers how they want to be Engineers with one kid who said I just want to make enough money so that I could have a burger and a milkshake every every single day that's what a drought does to you when it was my turn this is the dream that I shared with the class I said I want to leave Zimbabwe and I want to go to America and I want to become a successful entrepreneur so I had the longest answer in the class fast forward to my senior year in high school Zimbabwe was going through an economic crisis of Epic Proportions just take a look at this chart we had hyperinflation rate so right around 2003 when I was a senior in high school our inflation rate was about 1 000 in America We complain when it's five percent six percent in Zimbabwe it was a thousand percent take a look at its peak 98 daily not annual inflation rate so if you buy something for a dollar today tomorrow is two dollars Wednesday it's four dollars and so forth and so forth so this was me about to graduate high school and I'm thinking to myself okay how am I gonna make this dream come true uh people stopped dreaming about becoming millionaires because we were all trivia this is how much you need to go buy a loaf of bread you needed a hundred trillion dollars so what I decided to do was I decided to tap into my dad's superpower which is positive thinking so when I graduated high school instead of listening to the negative nancies who are telling me that my dream of leaving Zimbabwe and coming to America and becoming an entrepreneur was an Impossible Dream I focused on the actions that I could take in order to make it happen so I spent two years sleeping in an internet cafe applying to every College I could find applying to every scholarship I could qualify for and finally on my very last college application I got accepted and as they say the rest is history today I am living my dream as an entrepreneur in fact I've launched seven businesses now and my current business an unbelievable it's a Cookie Company where we donate a meal for every cookie we sell and since we launched right before the pandemic we've been able to donate two million meals to people in need and what's interesting is that when I was in second grade one of the non-profit organizations that helped us through the pandem through our drought was an organization called World Vision and today my cookie company we actually donate to World Vision so now it's full score it's full circle the organization that saved my life I'm also working and partnering with them to save people right now in a time of need so dreams do come true now I'll close with this we all have the power to become superheroes and all we need to do is we need to tap in to the free superpower that we all have which is positive thinking thank you guys [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 32,279

Keywords: English, Entrepreneurship, Happiness, Life, Motivation, Purpose, Social Entrepreneurship, TEDxTalks, [TEDxEID:48780]

Id: JeBHRVSPh5s

Length: 10min 19sec (619 seconds)

Published: Tue May 23 2023