How to Stay Positive During Your Worst Days

it's tough to be your best right now there's a lot of people who are complaining there's a lot of people who are upset there's a lot of people who often out in the culture start like just just thriving on that negativity and chaos and it makes it hard for really positive really progressive really like people who are excited to change the world and do their good works it's difficult and I know that so you being a high performer and being here right now dedicating your life and working really hard to being your best and making great contributions in the world it can be hard and I know that and that's what this session is about this month we're gonna take on what what's it like when you have those dark days those disappointments those huge setbacks that happen inevitably to all of us and how can you use your mind instead of a few habits to overcome those a little faster to cope with them in a responsible manner but also you know to feel alive again after those really dark days that's a big topic here we're going to talk about it's not always the most inspiring thing when we talk about the difficult days but I do know that we all have to learn to be more resilient if we're gonna be high performers we have to learn how to transform all that negative chaotic energy into something that we have a sense of control about and that we can create some positive outcomes toward the things that we want in our life and that's hard when maybe your business is struggling or your spouse isn't supportive or somebody your family is sick or having really bad health or got a bad medical report I know that's hard so I'm here to cheer you on this week but also give you some capabilities and maybe new ways to look at a few things and try a new them try a few new things and that will get you at all those dark days a little faster the first piece I want to really talk about is maybe something most people don't think about and that is often the dark days we have that crushing defeats the difficulties of life often they're not preventable I mean you can't prevent maybe all the medical report when they're bad you can't prevent maybe every difficulty at the business but here's what I have found over and over the people who keep getting knocked off their feet over and over who can't get back to resilience or back to high performance often failed do something very simple that it turns out some of the world's greatest leaders do and that's a very simple thing that is to learn to anticipate drama learn to anticipate drama or turmoil or difficulty or challenge now again I know we've got people from all walks of life here we have some people who are or who are dealing with some major issues so let me give some examples here from minor issues to big issues okay sometimes let's say you you know you you end up at the end of the day and you had that big meeting earlier in the day and it didn't go the way you thought it did and you really disappointed about how it turned out and what happens often his disappointment is often a lack of having not anticipated enough things in advance and so what ends up happening is you kind of roll in with all these high expectations but you didn't anticipate the difficulties are the challenges that will come up right it turns out a lot of work that I've done by like Jim Collins and other organizational leaders have found out that leaders tend to anticipate drama in the sense that they're a little bit paranoid they're they're not paranoid in a negative way or an obsessive way but they're so thoughtful about what might go wrong that they're less disappointed later on so for example if you're going to go into a big important meeting of the day and you're really excited about this meeting you're finally gonna be vulnerable and share your ideas and be excited about your new dream your new idea and you plan out everything you're gonna say and you plan out how to do the close and and you think through everything and you practice everything but then in the middle of that meeting someone goes well I think that's a stupid idea and you didn't anticipate that drama you didn't anticipate that someone's gonna doubt you someone is gonna object someone's gonna interrupt you if you don't anticipate those things really throw you off and they rattle you so much so that later on you're a hot mess about it like later on like oh my god I didn't think that person was gonna say this and they didn't that everything in life if you're gonna be high performer you might take a step back and say what's gonna trip me up about this many of you know that I do that every single morning in the shower so the second question I asked in the shower is always what might trip me up today or throw me off and how would my highest self meet that I asked that every single day I look at my calendar when I look at my counter I see big events come up okay what might be what might go sideways there what might not work out well and by anticipating that when it comes up I'm calm I already saw it in my mind I already knew it might happen I already anticipated what to do but I mean this also at a more difficult level of life all right that sometimes there's going to be some major major turmoil in life and let's say you're heading into a breakup of a relationship so many people go into the break up a relationship and they don't think it through and so they don't anticipate that of course the other person's gonna fight for what they want of course the other person is going to become selfish at some point of course the other person's can become scared at some point of course the other person is going to you know argue and blame but when those things happen people are so surprised I can't believe you're buying me I go you're breaking up with someone and you can't believe the person is blaming you have you not lived one rotation around the earth yet you know it's like they forget human behavior they didn't anticipate it and I hope you did this this also applies to health right I'm always surprised how people who are like 50 years old who often say jeez you know I I'm really surprised my body is stiffening up you haven't moved in seven years you didn't anticipate that if you don't move in seven years you're gonna feel like crap and that's what happens is that all of a sudden health goes down people did anticipate of course as you get older you have to do more to take care of your health duh so you can't wake up on dangle I feel so sad I'm sore and old and gross how did you not know that was gonna happen how do not know that they were gonna interrupt you in the meeting how did you not know that the first time you you know made your pitch to that prospect they were gonna say no you have to anticipate the nose you have to anticipate the difficulties the bad health days the difficulties second big idea I want to share with you here is to learn to delay your response specifically what I want you to do is delay your emotional response now this is where you know some people say well Brennan that's a pretty stoic thing to say and I'm like well yeah maybe I mean Sohus ism has a lot to teach people and I think it's important that when something goes on not to freak out about it so many people here's what they do something negative happens and immediately they believe or think that it's the end of times and so they anticipate total destruction in the moment something simple happens like they anticipate total failure total horrible and they get all worked up and they get super emotional about stuff when it's just like you don't even know what's gonna happen yet or even if it did just happen just to lay your response you you get that terrible email and it fires you up someone writes you a bad email right my customer coworker and you get and all the fire is coming up and you just feel like you're gonna spit acid at the world you're so angry what do you do well first I would say why don't you delay that learn to delay the time between stimulus and response right before you jump to anger can you see the email and not get to anger delay that delay that emotional response a little bit more right it's so easy to just go with the emotions but often the way to cope and be resilient more is to think about the thoughts that you are having and ask are these thoughts that I'm having are these emotions that I'm having actually supporting me in coping with this moving through it or serving as a role model are these thoughts and emotions I'm having actually helping me cope with it move through it well or be a role model and so I think that all the time you know when there's thousands of people on who we care about who's part of this community that we deeply care about and all of a sudden our our live gas goes dead we don't freak out we just don't we just say okay take a breather take a breath let's go through this checklist let's check this plug that thing and do this thing let's go that's all you can do but if you let yourself freak out it end if you'd like go to the immediate freaked out then what ends up happening is you're also training your mind in your body to go to immediate freakout the way that you deal with every little bit of surprise and every little bit of drama and every little bit of disappointment is only setting you up for how you're gonna deal with the next one so if you're freaking out about all the little things when that big thing happens give me a disaster so what I tell people the time is go through the day and start training yourself to delay response time like just start training yourself like if you if you feel a negative emotion coming on or you want to immediately fight back or you want to immediately say something negative just breathe it out a little bit take two or three deep breaths and kind of wait and see a little bit you know the great spiritual teachers read any great spiritual text and you will see that every single great spiritual guru every single great spiritual leader of any times in any faith they had a calmness when the drama was around they didn't jump to anger often they asked questions often they delayed their response some would ask a big question and they say ah good question they'd close their eyes and they meditate for 20 minutes and come back with something like we're in such a culture of like speed speed speed speed the answer ANSWER Answer answer respond respond respond retaliate retaliate retaliate I'm kind of like take a breather don't let anybody fool you into thinking you need to reply immediately to anything like life is on your clock it's on your timeline and you need to start with that as a presupposition so when a negative event happens as example and ever saying Brittany what do we do did it do to do often I just take a breather and I think about it for a minute and then I'm decisive and we move okay next up you've got to allow and to socialize sadness look what I promised talk about the dark days in the disappointment you know you have to allow sadness to happen and you can't apologize for it you you can't try to hide it like like sadness is one of those things that does happen and it's not always easy to delay if you're sad allow it stop fighting it so much just be like I am sad that I lost that business deal I am sad that I lost that family member I am sad and this negative thing happened I didn't want it one of the ways that I moved through sadness so quickly and terrible things happened to my business or my life losing family and friends and clients having business deals going the tank watching you know people I care for really being mistreated was the ability go god that really does bum me out and allow it not rejecting the sadness allowing it and going ah I'm really sad about that let myself have my cry let myself have my pity day you know I'll let myself I always say like if you're sad I'm I'm fine to lose a day to sadness I don't want to lose a week to sadness I don't lose a month to sadness that's unhealthy but to lose a day to call in sick and say you know what can't work today can't shoot today don't feel good today there's nothing wrong with that and if you can have that mindset that there's nothing wrong with you being sad you'll be healthier this is an irony if you finally realize there's nothing wrong with being sad you'll actually be healthier and then maybe you'll be able to move on to this next part and that is to socialize your sadness to share with someone I'm really sad about this and allow for the fact that they're gonna go oh well all you have to do is a B and C and they're gonna try to solve it doesn't matter what they do the goal isn't to solve it the goal is for you to share it that's all stop worrying about what they're gonna say about it or judge about it but share it anyway and some people say well that bear that sounds that sounds crazy that's pretty vulnerable you know I lead a team you are you telling me I I should tell my team that I I'm upset or I'm sad or I don't feel good about this or I'm disappointed I'm like yeah tell them well they well what if they don't understand they'll understand they've been sad too once that's like what why do you think you're so different than everybody else that's what gets leaders in trouble is they don't communicate because they think they got to be the photobomb and so different than everybody else I'm like no you know what sometimes your life sucks too high performer and you sharing with other people who are maybe high performers or even under performers isn't gonna take away from you sharing emotion does not diminish you sharing emotion makes you stronger sharing emotion makes you a member of the community sharing emotion bonds you with people sharing emotion opens the gate to conversation and to change and so whether it's sadness or even joy like stop not sharing it next up big topic area in this one is I owe some people a healthy response is health people ask me often how do I deal with this well I go be healthy and what I mean by that is specifically when you know you're disappointed when you know you're sad when you know you've got major setbacks you have to delay the response to order 10 gallons of pad thai okay you just have to you you you cannot be like you know what I feel terrible so bust out the three bottles of wine here we go you have to delay the response that is unhealthy that makes sense it's super easy I mean it's crazy easy to when you are having a down day or you feeling disappointed to go oh my gosh and go wreck yourself and get exhausted so what happens you're disappointed or you have a major setback you know what you want to do sometimes your response high performers it is overworked you're sad so what do you do you overwork or there's a major setback so you know I'm gonna work 24/7 for nine months and you basically kind of kill yourself working and so in that way you say but I'm getting ahead no actually all of productivity science and all well-being science improves over and over and over again you compromising your sleep and overworking yourself is actually making your decisions be poorer it's making your reactions to other people be less sensitive less helpful you're worse at negotiating you're worse at closing sales you're worse at effectiveness in your own time of doing basic tasks you're worse everything and everything that has to do with leadership and progress and human relationships you're worse at when you cope by overworking that's what we do I'm disappointed so I'm gonna work harder I'm mad so I'm gonna work harder the business in doing well so I'm gonna work harder but if you overwork yourself that is not a healthy response next up is your daily g3 Journal and review if you've heard me teach a lot about down times before especially the last couple years a couple years ago the the g3 was the three G's and it's what it means is every single day I want you to journal on these three things and I do mean journal meaning you write it down in the morning and you review it at night so your that's why it says journal and review so you write in the morning and review it all at night and so here's what the g3 is the first thing you know is your gratitude and that is just what are you grateful for why does that make you feel good why are you thankful for it and just write it down in your journal just a whole like you should have a gratitude journal already but when you're disappointed or having setbacks I want you to do the gratitude in the morning a lot of guys do journal stuff is it the night I want you to move it right up the morning like just you got a prime your morning for some goodness so right off the bat you got to do that okay so gratitude second major thing I want you to focus on is your goals or the specific daily and weekly goals you're working on you got to get really narrow focused right when you're disappointed or sad or setback oh you know the idea of creating a vision board and seeing out 10 years from now that's too much what you need to do is get really close in near-term this day's goals this week's goals because you can check those suckers off and get a little progress in you'll feel differently as we talked about so goals is important and the third G is goodness and the goodness is noticing what is good from the previous day so when you start the day you're like okay what am i grateful for in general for life water my goal is specifically daily and weekly in each of these different areas of my life you might have goals in your career and your health and your finances and your relationships and then the goodness is what actually good did happen yesterday and that will just get you in a place where you like oh this day is going to be good too it's making you more mindful to all the good things and the reason I do that one last and the difference between gratitude gratitude general things are great for the goodness thing is to think about what good happened yesterday and the reason we do that because in neuroscience we know that thinking about the goodness from yesterday is triggering your hippocampus to kind of turn on and fire up and if we get more memory activation off the bat in the morning we actually have more creativity in the day - it's weird sparking memory is good for creativity creativity is very good for coping and so that's what I'm trying to get you reflect a little bit on something that happened yesterday just to think through find that mindful moment and it's also teaching you to be more mindful as through of the moments each day not just grateful in general but actually being mindful for the good moments each day so I want you to do that journal every morning and then every night I want you to look back at it and think about it and maybe repeat it if you want to I just want you to review the day and review those things what was that grateful oh yeah that's right because maybe at the end of the day the truth is you haven't moved a lot forward maybe you know you're your spouse or yourself you're still sick or maybe there's still conflict or maybe the biz because I'm not gonna be pollyannish and say everything changes in one day and everything's great just because you did your attitude Journal you make it in a day it still sucks so reviewing it is gonna put you back in that positive mindset that's gonna help you then take the next day as well okay last big idea in this particular section is all about these two magical words when you have disappointment dark days progress and perspective are everything matter of fact I remind myself of this all the time and that is if I'm having some dark days and sad times I'm like I gotta get progress so what I'll do is all identify with my five major moves if you read this book I promise habits you know about the five major moves so identify my five major moves and I'm like I leave two words one because momentum can shift mindset and so if I'm a dark disappointment down momentum like achieve some goals but here's what's important notice I said the five major moves that's what I mean with progress because what a lot of people mistakenly do is they just start doing lots of tasks and activities that aren't correlated in any way to the meaningful pursuits of life so here's what happened I'm bummed I'm downed so I'm doing bunch of work the next day they still feel bummed and down because what was their work it was a bunch of activities actually didn't matter that didn't give them any meaning so if you're down the most important working you be doing is the ones that you do feel connection enthusiasm meaning fulfillment satisfaction from those ones that do intrinsically bring you joy those the ones that I want you to progress towards matter of fact I really want you when you're feeling down disappointed major setbacks dark days what I really desperately want you to do is stop multitasking and doing all the little like busywork things that don't matter like like put off like if it's Wednesday and you know you got a stack of bills and they're not due for another 30 days don't pay the bills that day because that's not fun you're you got plenty time to do it later when you feel like when you get over this piece that's funk like just say okay write the date on those bills pay them on but don't do it today because that's busy work and said today find an activity that you find to be creative compelling engaging fulfilling and do that progress towards the things that have meaning that's huge when you're down but most people don't do that because what's comforting just like eating comfort food is doing low-hanging fruit activity I'll pay the bills and answer much emails you know but those small little tasks those don't give you enough bang for the buck to really move through it and there's a big misconception about that in the culture including the science that often says oh no no just you know if people can complete small steps small tasks they'll feel better and it's like well yeah I mean we all have this reward system in our brain and little dopamine will fall out but do we do we want a little drip drip of dopamine or do want the floodgates to come open and feel alive so I want you to do the activities that are more meaningful not just like tasks you know it's really important let me give you an example and I hope this doesn't offend anybody this is this is very common thing I learned from a very very famous female executive leadership coach she was sharing with me that a lot of her clients when they were down and disappointed would they be at home and she said that what they would do is they decide to reorganize her closet and I said they would - they reorganize their closet and I said did that did that help them she was of course not I said did that make them feel better she's like a little bit and I said well did you then tell them - later on when they feel bad to organize the closet again and she's just like laughing we're having this conversation and she goes the no the the truth is organizing the closet it makes them feel good and gives them something to do but it's actually a delay tactic from facing what is real and needed and so it's just as bad as comfort food and I was like wow and so she asked me she said so Brennan what's your closet I was like oh that's good I said what's your closet brand howdy how do you like what do you do to delay taking all the things that are necessary when you are down or frustrated or hurt and I had to really think about that I was like wow what what do i do that's not helping but it's like a little busy work it's kind of shuffling papers around and I was like oh you know what I do I go to my journals in my notes night I kind of review them or organize them and she says not helping and I said okay good I said what I do she goes find the needle movers and get a little progress towards that that major activity or a major project that actually matters one little like just don't give time to all that busy work because that's just comfort food that's like dang that is a really huge insight progress towards those things that matter because that will also then help with this but I think this is a very separate idea I always say progress press perspective perspective you get from time away from something or from other angles into something and so the most important thing that I can encourage you to do just like I asked you to socialise sadness is to share how you're viewing the problems that you're having in your life or the challenges and what I mean by that is literally share how you're thinking about it so if you're struggling with something with your team your business then go to your team and say hey um can I just walk you through how I'm thinking about this and seeing this and perspective is not trying to solve anything right this doesn't say problem solving it says perspective it means you share specifically with other people how you are thinking about something and ask how would they would think about it follow me so it's like you know I I'm I'm dealing with this loss in the business right now and it's really bumming me out I don't know really out of thing sher you how I'm thinking about it and you need either a coach who can hear that a comrade a collaborator or colleague someone who you know like and trust who you can just share how you're thinking through more often because most disappointments happen because we get myopic meaning we narrow our focus solely to the problem and in not describing how we're viewing it we can't broaden it and so no matter what we have found in almost all social psychology research in almost everything that I know to be true having coach high performers for so long is that if we can get you sharing how you're thinking about things and feeling about things with others and not trying to problem-solve but just asking how they would look at it it actually makes you look at a different way like here's what's been going on here's how I'm looking at how would you look at it and they might go oh well I look at that like that's like really great for you you go what and like well it gives you time now to to kind of restart you know it's like when Steve Jobs came back to Apple he had a very different perspective going back to Apple than he had when he was already running before but got fired and that perspective allowed him to do better he had to go to another organization and start another company and have a whole new set of team members to have him look at things differently that allowed him when he came back to the same problem if you will same opportunity if you will Apple he saw it in a completely different way cuz he'd been with a different group of people considering a different problem and he learned a new ways to think and that's what we always have to do keep expanding your ways of thinking about things now I know none of this sounds easy with when you have a dark day who wants to work out when you have a bad day when you feel sad who really wants to share anything we have taught who really wants to go up that down and be the better person but these things are what you have to start training yourself to do if you want to cope better in the future and sometimes in the media it doesn't feel like oh I really want to talk this through I'm like if I talk it through I'll cope it through better and next time it won't be such a big deal here we go and yes do you have to force yourself to do these yeah well good thing when you talk about high performance we always say the journey to greatness begins not at comfort uncertainty but when we're allowing ourselves to step in discomfort and try new things and if you're going to reach another level of performance in your life I'm here to suggest you that when you're disappointed do the things that bring discomfort but make you better hey all I hope you enjoyed this episode if you did would you please smash that subscribe button and also post any questions you have down below because it's these questions that you're all asking that inspires these episodes I'd love to hear what you think about it also if you would love to join us on our next upcoming live training we call it our high-performance experience coaching program if you like some coaching and have some perspective and get some two hours of live with me every single month then click the link in the post down below so you can join us in hpx coaching I'd love to give you some more strategies more insight and more interaction to help you reach your next level of success until next time again please subscribe to share this video with anybody who could be inspired by it today and thanks one more time for being part of my community

Channel: Brendon.com

Views: 289,258

Keywords: self-help self-improvement personal development the charged life, personal growth, motivation, inspiration, motivational video, motivational speaker, inspiring videos, inspirational quotes, motivational quotes, life quotes, life coaching, high performance coach, success strategies, the charge, the motivation manifesto, brendon burchard, staying positive, positive mindset, thinking positively, having a hard day, difficult times, getting through hard times, remaining positive

Id: IKHqM-zv1NU

Length: 30min 16sec (1816 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 10 2020