Transcript of How to Stop Thinking Negatively

So let's get into it. So here's the thing. Negative, it's a label that we as humans made up. Like your brain doesn't think negative or positive. It thinks safe and not safe. And if you can understand this, then you can really start to understand why you are the way that you are. There's an evolutionary psychologist named Randolph Nesse, and he explains this with this thing that's really great that I want to bring up. It's called the smoke detector principle. And I really want you to understand this because once you do, it really makes you understand your brain and the way that it works.

So the smoke detector principle. Okay. Think about the smoke detector in your house. If that smoke detector goes off every time you burn toast, let's admit that's annoying, but it doesn't cost you anything. It's just annoying. But if it stays quiet during a real fire in your house, it costs you everything. So which would you rather have? Would you rather have a smoke detector that's too sensitive that goes off when you burn toast, or a smoke detector that doesn't work? Of course, we would all choose the one that's too sensitive.

And that's exactly what evolution has built inside of your brain. An alarm that is designed to go off too often on purpose, because a false alarm is cheap, but a missed alarm is deadly for everybody. And so if you think of it this way, you don't have a negative brain. You just have a very, very sensitive smoke detector. That kind of changes thinking. Oh, I kind of see the benefit of it now. So your, like, quote unquote negative brain is not just trying to keep you safe.

The problem isn't that it goes off. The problem is that it's calibrated for predators and a life that our ancestors like lived 200,000 years ago. It's not calibrated for emails or for a slow sales month or for somebody not texting you back as fast as you want. And so the goal isn't to, like, rip our smoke detectors off the ceiling. The goal here is to really recalibrate the smoke detector. That is our job to do. And once you start to see it this way, you're going to stop fighting your brain and you're going to start training your brain.

And if you do that, you can live a much better life and you won't be so afraid of taking risks that are good for you. And if you do that and you can take some risks, your life will change. And so here's how you do it. Okay. Number one, I want you to ask yourself when you're feeling a lot of fear, is this possible or is it probable? Is it possible or is it probable? Because your brain is really incredible at confusing something that's possible with probable. Is it possible your partner is mad at you because they sent you back a one-word text?

Sure, it's possible. But is it probable or like, are they just sitting in a meeting and they can't get back to you right now? And when you look at it, like, what's the actual evidence here? Not the feeling, not what you're feeling inside of your body when they haven't sent you a message back or they only send you one word back. Not the feeling inside of your body. What's the evidence? The evidence is they sent you a text message back. And sometimes the evidence isn't very clear, but the alarm, boop, boop, boop, boop, it's going to go off anyways. And so is it possible or is it probable?

That's number one. Number two, I call it finish the movie. Here's something that I've noticed after 20 years of coaching people. Your worst case scenario always stops at the scariest moment. It's basically our brains are like, it's like a horror movie that cuts to black the second the monster shows up. Like a client leaves, cut to black. A relationship ends, cut to black. Your boss sends you an email saying that they need to meet with you, cut to black.

Your brain never shows you the next scene. It just stops at the scariest part. The scene where you go, I don't know what the hell is going to happen. But in the next scene, that's the scene where you would have handled it. The scene where it works out better than you thought it was going to. The scene where you take care of everything and everything ends up being okay. And because you never really see the next scene because it cuts and fades to black as soon as the scary part happens, your nervous system, it reacts like the movie is going to end right there.

It reacts to the absolute worst case scenario. What are you doing? You're catastrophizing is what you're doing. So I want you to do this. I want you to remember when you have some catastrophizing going on, to just finish the movie. Ask yourself this question. Okay. And then what? Like, let's say your biggest client leaves you and cut to black. Oh my God, I'm going to be broke, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we doom and gloom. Okay. Your biggest client leaves you. And then what? Well, then I'd lose a third of my revenue.

But finishing the movie, once you do this, it's only what's going to change your thought. And if you want the alarm itself to actually change, you need to go into then step number three. Step number three is then to give your brain proof that you have control. This is the part that blew my mind. Okay. I talked about learned helplessness on this podcast before. I've talked about it a few times. Basically, this is what it is. There was a study back in the 1960s, a terrible study that was done, and they ran experiments on animals where the animals were exposed to stress that they could not escape.

And eventually they just stopped trying to escape even when they could escape. And so for decades, the conclusion was that the animals learned to be helpless. But then 50 years later, the same two people who did that study published a paper looking back at 50 years of research through modern neuroscience. And they basically said, hey, we completely messed up. We were actually completely backwards. And what they found was that helplessness isn't learned.

Like the passivity and the helplessness that we have, that's the brain's default response to prolonged bad events. What gets learned is control. Like your brain learns that it can control circumstances. So there's a part of your brain that's called the medial prefrontal cortex. And this is really important. When it detects that your actions actually make a difference, it sends a signal down to the part of your brainstem that's driving your stress response, and it turns it down.

Let me say that in plain English. Okay. Expecting the worst is basically our factory setting as humans. Control is the thing that we actually learn through the actions that we take. We learn through taking the right action over time that we can actually control the situation. And when we do that, our brain turns our stress response down. Holy shit. Like, do you understand what that means? Nobody's born an optimist.

Nobody is stuck being a pessimist. Confidence and control are skills that your brain learns through evidence of your actions. And where most people get it wrong is they think that when they're worrying about something, that they're doing something. Because worrying feels like control. It feels like you're working on the problem, but it gives your prefrontal cortex zero evidence because you didn't actually do anything. And so how do we use this information? Well, when the alarm goes off and you start worrying, this is what you have to do.

You ask yourself, what's one thing in my control that I can do in the next two minutes? And then you do it. And basically, you don't have to solve the entire thing. You don't have to solve the entire problem. You just take one step in the right direction, but you must do something. Otherwise, you're teaching your brain that when a threat comes up, we do nothing. There's nothing we can do. Business is slow and your brain says, oh my God, it's over. What can you do? Pick up the phone, call three past clients. That's it. Because every time you answer the alarm with action instead of worry, your brain logs it as evidence that you're in control.

When a threat shows up, I do something. And if I can do something, then I have control. And the more evidence that it collects over time, the quieter the alarm gets. Worry rehearses your fears and action rehearses control. Okay. Which brings us then to number four. Pay attention to who you surround yourself with. If you feel like you're negative, look around you and see who's in your life. Have you ever wondered how much the people around you actually influence your thoughts and decisions?

Because it's way more than you think. There was a study that was done by a guy named James Fowler. He looked at 4,700 people who were followed for more than 20 years. It was part of the Framingham Heart Study. And he found that happiness spreads through social networks up to three degrees of separation. So if a friend that you see often becomes happy, the chances of you being happy go up by about 25%. Now, if the friend that you see often is doom and gloom and sad all the time, chances are your doom and gloom and sadness is going to go up by about 25%.

And so you've got to start thinking about your friends and think about the people that you surround yourself with. Because your smoke detector gets calibrated by what you think, what you do, but it also gets calibrated by the people that you surround yourself with. If everyone around you treats a piece of news like a fire in the house, your brain learns, oh, that's just the normal reaction. Even if we're just reacting to burnt toast. And then you start thinking their thoughts, and then you start calling their thoughts yours.

So for the next week, I want you just to look around you after every real conversation that you have. I want you to ask yourself one question. Do I feel more positive or negative after talking to this person? And you're going to see a pattern really fast. And once you see who's setting off your alarm, you can go, maybe I should stop spending so much time with that person. And maybe I should spend time with this other person who I feel positive every single time I hang out with them. And so that brings us to number five. I want you to put boundaries on the conversations you have, not just the people you surround yourself with.

So when I say put boundaries, a lot of people think like, oh, I need to cut this person off completely. And sometimes it does, but there are some people in your life that you simply cannot get rid of. Even if you wanted to, you simply cannot get rid of some people. It's not really an option. So in that case, you don't need to completely get rid of the person. You don't need to change the person. You need to change the boundaries of the conversations that you have with them. So psychologists have a term for this that most people have never heard of.

So it's really hard to stop because it feels like a connection with somebody. Like you actually feel like you're connected to the other person. But if you think back to number three, co-rumination is basically worrying with a partner now. And it feels like you're working on a problem, but it gives your brain zero evidence of control. And so it's basically two smoke detectors setting each other off. And so you really need to pay attention to this. You have to set boundaries around all of your conversations with people who might be more on the negative side, but you can't get them out of your life.

And so let me give you a couple of boundaries. The first one I would recommend is a time boundary. You can say something like, hey, listen, I've got 10 minutes to vent about this with you, and then I just want to hear what you're going to do about it next. Does that sound like a deal? And so you're putting a boundary on how long you're going to let this person vent to you. Hey, vent to me for 10 minutes, but then when we get done with 10 minutes, I want to hear what you're going to do about it. And then you start talking about actions. You start talking about control. The second one is what is called a direction boundary. When the complaining starts looping, you just ask, hey, what do you want to happen here?

And that one question moves someone from the problem that they keep talking about over and over again to the solution. And here's the thing that you're going to realize. If they don't want to solve the problem, if they don't want to move, you're going to find out very quickly because they're not going to give you an answer. They're just going to want to keep venting and venting and venting and venting. And then you know, okay, well, then I need to change something here. And then the third boundary is what's called a dose boundary. Some people you love are just not going to change. I'm sorry. Just the way that it is.

Maybe your mom texts you the scariest news story that she can find every single morning. You don't have to cut her off, but you also don't have to read that text message at 6:00 AM when it comes through before your own brain has had a chance to set its own baseline. And so listen, I'm going to say something that everybody needs to hear. You can love somebody and talk to them in smaller doses. And so maybe you need to have smaller doses of that negative person so that you can build a positive life.

And underneath all three of these boundaries is you teaching yourself something. Their alarm is not your alarm. Hey, they can think that way, but I'm not going to think that way anymore. I used to think that way. I'm not going to think that way anymore. You can hear their alarm go off and go, yeah, that's their smoke detector, right? Without thinking that there's a fire yourself. You can recognize their alarm and not have it set yours off. And here's what's really important to understand about this. This is not about not ever having a negative thought again.

Like, you will, first off, you're a human. You will never not have a negative thought again. Sometimes there is a fire. Sometimes the relationship is in trouble. Sometimes the business really does need fixing. And if you try to force every negative thought out of your head, I promise you this, first off, it will never stop because your brain's doing exactly what it needs to do. And there's nothing wrong with your brain. There's nothing wrong with the system. But number two, if you try to force every negative thought out of your head, you're just creating more stress in your life anyways.

So positive thinking isn't telling yourself everything is fine when the house is on fire. It's teaching your brain to get better at filtering what is a fire and what is not a fire. And in teaching yourself that you can handle no matter what happens to you, you're going to have control. You will then stop feeling as much negativity as you do. And when you change which alarms you pay attention to and you change how often your alarms go off at that point in time, then your life really starts to change.