#82 Positivity | Recovery Secrets Series

Welcome to the Overcoming PTSD Podcast. My name is Brad Schipke, and this is the limited series called Recovery Secrets Daily Coaching. Now, these were private sessions that I originally ran as a paid coaching program, but now for the first time ever, I'm making all 100+ sessions available for free for all of you podcast listeners. And this series is over 100 days of practical strategies that have helped thousands of trauma survivors fully heal. So make sure to subscribe because I'm dropping a new episode every single weekday until the archive is complete, and you definitely do not want to miss it. So without further ado, let's dive on in.

We are live here. Welcome everyone to our Recovery Secrets daily coaching call. Sorry for the bit of a delay. We'll make sure everyone has a minute to pop on here and we will rock and roll for our session today. So let's just make sure everything is up and running and then we will Get started. So if you're going to be joining us live, feel free to say hey in the chat box there so that I can welcome you as you go along here. Good, awesome. We are up and running, which is great. And feel free to, of course, ask questions. Feel free to comment in the chat box today as we go along. So like I said, we'll give a minute to get everything rocking and rolling. I apologize, we had some Wi-Fi issues, had to make a quick change to a different location. So it's good to be here. With you, good morning, good morning, good morning. Hope you all had an awesome, awesome time yesterday as I did with our coach Ryan, who was able to do the session. For those of you who missed it, the recording is up on the platform, and of course you can watch the replay, I believe, as well in the Facebook group. But hope you had an awesome time. I had an awesome time. I learned a lot yesterday, and he just has so much valuable information. So I'm very much looking forward to that every month for the next year at the very, very least.

So.

That is fantastic. I hope you did his assignment and it is good to be here with you. Sorry I missed you yesterday. Brad's a little under the weather, so it's just me for a little while. I had a dentist appointment and then we had some Wi-Fi issues this morning, but it's great to be here with you nonetheless. You can see we're at home here. It's a little messy. All right. Welcome, Joanne. Welcome, Delaine. Welcome, Joe. Welcome, Isabella. Welcome, Kate. Great to have you here with me today, this morning. Happy Tuesday. We are doing awesome in this week so far. We have an awesome week planned ahead of us. So if you ever have topics that you want us to cover in Recovery Secrets Daily Coaching, what I want you to do is submit them through the platform. We have so many topics that we can cover, that we do cover, that we have covered. But what we've been doing the past couple of weeks, maybe a couple of months, is on Friday we're voting on a topic of your choice, meaning the community's choice. So I put a couple of options out there in regard to topics that have been submitted. So if you want your topic covered, make sure that you submit it so that we can vote on it. And then as a community, we can decide what we cover on Friday. So good morning, Jeanette. Yeah, so I hope you all love Ryan yesterday. I had just such a fun time. I know he had such a fun time as well, which is awesome. So today I actually want to talk about something pretty big and pretty general, but really, really necessary. And it's one of those things that we need to come back to again and again and again and again and again. And a lot of times my job as a coach is not even necessarily to teach you something totally brand new. Sometimes it is, and especially in regard to PTSD and processing, it is typically right. But sometimes when it comes to the foundational things, the foundational elements that we need in life, it's about reminding you of something that you might already know, or you might already have learned but aren't implementing, or you might have been implementing but kind of fell off track there. So in general today, I just want to talk about positivity. This is an amazing topic. It's something super, super, super important. So if I could get a little help here today in the chat box. Let me know why you think positivity is important. Why do you think positivity is important? Good morning, Lena. Great to have you here. Excellent to have everyone here. Awesome. Oh, Kate, you're also going to the dentist today. I have another dentist appointment today. It has been, it has been the month of dentists. I had a tooth break and it's been, I don't want to say a nightmare. It's been an excellent experience. I've got to meet a lot of new people and new dentists. I haven't been to the dentist this, this particular dentist, which has been a ton, ton, ton of fun. And they're very positive and they're very encouraging, and it's been a great experience. So, okay, I also hope you have a great experience going for a better smile. So why do we think positivity is important? Let me know in the chat box there. Why do we think positivity is important? I want to run this today a little bit more like a workshop. I'm looking for that engagement today because the more you engage, the more you're going to get out of this. So this is kind of one of those lessons that it's going to be a team effort here. Why do we think Positivity is important. So Lena sharing to to help momentum, right? Absolutely. That's one of many reasons positivity is important. So why do you think you capital Y O U think positivity is important? Let me know there in the chat box. Lena sharing negativity causes pain, right? Okay, there's the inverse, right? So if negativity causes pain, is it then possible that positivity causes pleasure. It allows us to feel a certain way, right? Joanne sharing, it changes the vibration, that changes the mindset. It absolutely is going to be a huge factor in regard to mindset in a lot of areas of life, right? And so now I want you to think about why is positivity important to me? Why is positivity important in my life? What's it going to do for me specifically, right? So in general, it's gonna help us with momentum. It's gonna help us with our mindset. It's gonna help us with you know, pain and pleasure. It's gonna change what we kind of bring to the world, right? In general, yes, all of those things right now. Why is it important to me? Why do I need positivity in my own life? In my own life, why do I need positivity? And there's a lot of different ways we can practice positivity, and we're gonna talk about those today as well. And I'll share a quick story. And the reason that I was kind of inspired to do this topic, although positivity is always a good topic, the reason I was inspired to do this topic was because Over the weekend, I was, I was hearing a story. A friend was hanging out with a couple of friends and I was hearing them talk about an issue one of the friends was, was facing, right? So this woman had just ordered a refrigerator. I think she was building a house or she was moving into a new house. Whatever the case was, she was getting a new refrigerator and how the conversation went, she was like, oh, I ordered this fridge and there's all these supply chain problems and the fridge finally got here and it was the wrong fridge. Right. And the woman herself had said, well, you know what? I mean, as far as things goes, it's not the end of the world. And somebody else had chimed in and said, hey, listen, you have every right to be upset that the fridge is wrong. And I, I was so shocked to hear this, right? And so this other person said, you have every right to be upset and complain and, and basically all these negative things that your, the fridge that you ordered did not get delivered on time. It wasn't the right fridge. You have every single right to be upset. And I just couldn't believe that that was the outcome of the conversation, right? And so it kind of got me thinking of all the ways that positivity comes into play, right? And so there are all these things that we do or don't do in our life that help us cultivate this positivity. One great example is gratitude, right? And so this woman initially was doing is saying, hey, like I got the wrong fridge and it was a pain in the butt, but you know what? I mean, as far as things go, that's not the biggest problem in the world. And so she was taking the more positive outlook and then someone was actually shifting her in the other direction, which was really super interesting, right? So positivity is— it's going to come into play in your relationships. It's going to come into play in, of course, your thoughts. It's going to come into play in your actions, and it's going to impact your life in certain ways. So let me know, in regard to you, why is positivity important, or what is positivity going to do for your own life? Awesome. Good morning, Lorena. Great to have you here. So Isabella sharing, positivity changes my outlook for an entire day when I try and stay in that mindset. So it changes the outlook, which I think is an interesting word because outlook, we're typically thinking about something in the like near future. It changes the way I think about the future. Now the future isn't something that happened yet, so it changes. I'm going from this path to this path just by being more positive, just by choosing kind of the words that I say or the things that I think a little bit more carefully. Joe is sharing similar to gratitudes. It feels good, right? Positivity feels good. Killing sharing when I'm positive, everything falls into place, and that is a great, great testimonial for positivity, right? When I'm positive, things just seem to kind of go my way. And what was really interesting, I wanted to actually do this session yesterday, but got derailed because of the dentist appointment. I'd never heard him say this before, but Ryan on his call yesterday had he had been using this term. Positive path. And I think that's so interesting. That describes him and his mindset and the mindset of his entire family and his kind of overall, overall mindset for his life is positive path. And I thought that was a really interesting way to kind of put it. And when we're on this positive path, things do fall into place. And that's what it feels like. Things fall into place. Things, opportunities seem to just present themselves to us. And why is that? Now, there are reasons for that. And typically it's because we're a lot more open-minded, right? And so we're seeing the good and we're, what we're saying to our brain a lot of times is, here's the good, here's where we're going, here's where we wanna go. And our brain is gonna open doors and show us that those doors are open. So it's gonna feel like opportunities are just dropping in our lap, but really what it is is we're just noticing them because we're in that positive mindset. Awesome. I love that. Morning, Barbara. Good morning, Mimi. Great to have you here. Joe sharing positive upward trend, right? So have you ever noticed people in your life that maybe every time you see them, year after year, decade after decade, they have more and more and more and more and more to complain about, right? Or the opposite is true. Every time you see them, decade after decade, their life is just going better and better and better and better and better, right? And so what's the difference between these 2 people? Now, we can say mindset as a general stance on this, right? But also positivity. One is having a positive outlook on life. How can I— right? We've talked about this in Recovery Seekers before, this how can I attitude. How can I make a change? That's so different. You know, I can't do it. I can't do it. And how can I? Really interesting because I can't, how can I are very, very similar. We're using basically one word in, uh, in different versions of that word. We're using can and can't, and then we're using a different sentence structure. We're using something that's open-ended. Not I can't, period. That's the end of a sentence. I remember learning about this in elementary school. You put a period at the end of something, that is the end, full stop. You put that little squiggly thing, right? That little question mark at the end, and the world is completely open. How can I leaves you with this feeling and this opportunity. How can I? You don't know. That's the question. How can I? And then you get to discover it. I can't, full stop. That's a wall. Everything's closed when you kind of take that outlook. And so just by asking something like changing from a negative statement of I can't to a positive statement of How can I? We are changing the opportunities that are going to present themselves to us because we're open instead of closed, right? Does that make sense? Let me know if that makes sense. Awesome. Mimi sharing positive mindset instead of always being in prevention mode changed my life. And these things will change your life. And what's cool about this is this can change your life really, really quickly. I mean, really quickly. It is a skill that we build and there are things that happen in the brain that we are changing neural pathways. We're building new neural pathways. All of that is true. All of that is happening. Yes. And so for it to become default, it is a skill that you build, meaning it takes a little while. Yes. However, when you start to practice this, you're going to feel the results of it very, very, very quickly, which is really, really neat. You can start to be positive right now. Let's just say one positive thing. Let me know one positive thing in the chat box there. It could be a question. It could be something about the future. It could be A thought. It could be something positive that's already happened today. One positive thing in the chat box here, and you're gonna feel the difference, right? And so actually, a lot of times when I do lessons on positivity, we'll give examples of negative thoughts, negative actions, right? And as I say the negative thoughts, it's like, okay, I hate myself. I'm the worst person in the world. Like, I can feel my body language change. I can feel how that negativity feels. And then at the same token, right? Different side of that coin, as we say the positive things, just by saying them. Now I'm just saying them. I'm, I'm not even really necessarily feeling them, but you say them, you think them, you present them, and it's gonna change your outlook, right? So I'm a lovable person. I am worthy of love. I'm capable of love. I'm so strong. I'm so smart. I'm always working to get better. I can do this, right? All of those things are going to lift you up, and they're really, really simple changes, right? Today we're just talking about this big general concept of positivity. That's thoughts, that's actions, that's the words that we say, that's the— everything in our life can be tweaked to be positive. And it's gonna change your life, which is cool. So there's gonna be an internal change, there's gonna be external change, there's gonna be a short-term change and a long-term change, which is really super cool. Bartering positivity gives me peace and joy and a great way forward. So this is an amazing thing too. So what I kind of want you to do here is put these things in your pocket. Now, if you haven't maybe been positive or experienced positivity and you're just like, well, I just don't know what positivity does for me yet. I want you to take a look at some of these things that we're saying in the comments that I'm reading off to you, because these are things that can happen to you and will happen to you when you start to be more positive and have more positive thoughts and actions and stuff like that. And then for those of you who are sharing these, you know, we're not— we're human beings, so we're not going to at first be positive 100% of the time, right? It's going to be working up to that until we get to that point. And this is something that we need to continue to cultivate throughout a lifetime, right? But I want you to think about how it makes you feel in those moments where you're negative, right? So in those moments where you're just feeling like— and it's— I find it funny, and I found it funny on my journey as well. The more positive I was, when I did get sucked into those negative moments, it was almost humorous. I mean, it was quite literally funny to me because I would hear myself, I would see myself saying, you know, like, everything sucks, and like, this whole world is against me, and like, things aren't going to work out, right? I would just say all these things. And I would laugh to myself because I knew that wasn't really the case. I knew that wasn't the whole truth. And so when we skew to one side, I always tell people, if you're going to skew to one side, if 100% positive is here and 100% negative is here, if you're going to skew to one side, skew to the positive side. So many of us are skewed so completely to the negative side. And then when this idea is presented, well, why don't we try to be more positive? It's like, oh, that's not realistic. 100% negativity isn't realistic either. That's not reality either. So if you're going to skew, skew the positive side. But the more I practice positivity, the more that I notice in those moments where I found myself sucked into negativity, where I was like, I'm saying these things and I am feeling these things, but I know that they're not true. I know that I'm making a choice to go down this negative path. And so it gets more and more clear. You build more and more awareness around your thoughts and around those things. When you change your negative thoughts to positive, eventually your thoughts will automatically shift to positive on a regular basis. Exactly that, Joanne. That's a great point, right? So that's the internal journey that I'm talking about. So the more that you practice this, and it's going to be a deliberate practice at first, the more that you practice this, the easier it's going to get. You are building the skill. You are quite literally building a muscle in your mind. You're building a neural pathway in your mind to go down. It will eventually become automatic. And for a lot of people, and I love this moment, it's also, like, in a sense, really sad because many of us are wired negative and that default is negative. But many people have their moment where they find themselves automatically going to the positive for the first time, and it's super strange. And I remember my moment where I've been practicing positivity, I've been practicing gratitudes, and I was just trying to chip away at this. I wasn't even sure if I would get to the point where it automatically be positive. And I remember the first automatic positive thought that I had, and I thought that somebody else said it. It was an internal thought, but I thought that somebody else said it. And I'll share the story quickly. Brad and I and his family were in a We live in New England, so there's a lot of lakes and there's a lot of areas to do really cool, beautiful things. And his family had rented a lake house, and we were up there and we were visiting and we were swimming in the lake. And I went into the bathroom and there's like a small mirror, but I went in and I was in my bathing suit because we were just swimming. And I kind of just looked myself in the mirror and the automatic thought was like, you look great. It's not like this groundbreaking, outerworldly thought that is so unbelievably positive, but it was just like, you look great. Right. And there's just in general kind of a lack of criticism. And I like literally in that moment looked around, as silly as that sounds, because it was an internal thought. I literally looked around and I was like, who said that? Whose thought was that? Is somebody in here who said that? And it hit me and it hit me kind of like a light bulb moment and it hit me really hard. And I was like, wow, like I've been, I have been doing all this work and here it is. It paid off. That was automatic. I didn't have to— I didn't make myself say that. It just automatically happened. So that's what can happen when you practice this positivity. And so I want to think about, or, and I want to encourage you to think about what areas of your life, and you could make a list of these, do you feel like you can improve your positivity? What areas of your life need improvement in regard to positivity? So many areas this is going to apply to you and just apply in general. What areas of your life could use improvement in regard to positivity? Let me know in the chat box there. Very interesting. Positivity is associated with openness and acceptance, right? So when we have that question mark, how can I, which I would consider a very positive statement, we're facing an obstacle or roadblock, whatever it is we're facing, how can I, it's open, it's open-ended, and it has this air of acceptance and non-judgment. So we're going into this and we're saying, where is the opportunity? What's going on? How can I fix this? And we're very, very open versus very, very closed. I can't. It's a statement. It's done. That's it. That's the end of the book. That's the end of the sentence. I try to make a list at the end of the day— or excuse me, I try— I like to make an end of the day list of all the amazing things I've accomplished throughout the day. That keeps me in a positive headspace. That's an amazing way to practice positivity. One of the things we talk about in our Broken to Unbreakable program is something we call the good things list. We refer to it as the GTL, the good things list. Brad and I did this for years. It's an amazing practice where every day— and there's science behind this and I'll explain it— every day you write 3 good things that happen that day. It is so simple to do, it is so impactful and so much fun. That list, doing a good things list compared to high-strength antidepressants, equal out, meaning that high-strength antidepressants and the good things list had the same outcome impact on someone's depression. Okay. Really, really cool. So really, really powerful thing. Really powerful thing. Now, I know a lot of us, and this isn't against medication, but I know a lot of us would rather just take a supplement in the morning than write down 3 things. But I really want you to think about, they're not all that different. And they're, in fact, writing 3 things is a lot easier because you don't have to go and get a prescription. You don't have to pick it up. You don't have to talk to the doctor. You don't have to get represcribed. You don't have to refill it. All you have to do is jot down 3 good things that happen to you that day. Really super positive. What's cool about that too is you keep this really, really sweet log of the little things in life. And I'm under the impression in life in general that it's the little things that matter. It's the little moments that matter. And so you get to capture a lot of those little moments. And I'll share a quick story about the good things list. And, and if this is something you wanna implement, well, we can talk about how to implement these things as we get further along here. I was working at a retail shop. At one of the times when we were making these lists, and we had this mannequin and she was dressed in the clothes for the retail shop. And her name, we, we called her Elizabeth for some reason. Her name was Elizabeth. And at the beginning of the shift, we had to take her from inside the store and put her outside. The store is out on like a street, and we had to put her outside the store and her arms would always fall off. And then at, at night, we'd have to take her from outside and put her back inside. And so one of the things on our checklist was Bring Elizabeth in or put Elizabeth out, and her arms always fell off. And I remember one time I was bringing her in, I was closing up the shop that night. I was bringing in Elizabeth. I brought her in and her arms didn't fall off. And that was the thing that I wrote on my good things list that day. And it was so small, but it was such like a fun, awesome moment. It was such a good moment. And I was able to capture that moment only because of that list. If I didn't write that on that list, that would've gone, that would be long gone from my memory. And so the cool thing about that is you can go back after a while and you can read all all the good things and you can remember and you can reminisce. And Brad and I used to do this all the time. We would go through pages and page— we'd have a different page for each month. We'd go through pages and pages. We'd be like, oh my gosh, I totally forgot about this. Remember this? And it brings you that joy again, which is really cool. So a lot of benefits to that, Isabel. That's an amazing, amazing exercise. Energy flows where your attention goes. Beautiful rhyme there. Energy flows where your attention goes. Where you put your attention, that's where you're going. That is where you're going. If you're focused on how wrong things can go, I promise you, They're gonna go wrong. If you're focused on how right things can go, I promise you they're gonna go right. And we talk about, or maybe you've heard about like manifestation. And so manifestation, the basic understanding of that is we are picturing something. We are basically willing something to happen. And while will alone is not going to make my water bottle that I left over there float into my hands, what will does and what happens is when we focus on something, we are marking it as important in our brain. And we have this system in our brain, it's called the reticular activating system, RAS. This system in our brain, when it knows that things are important to us, it seeks opportunities to make those things happen. So we input this and our brain is the GPS that's like, that's the thing you want. Great. Here's where we are. Here's where you want to go. Here's an opportunity. Here's an opportunity. Here's an opportunity. And so presents these opportunities to us that otherwise would still be there, but we wouldn't recognize as opportunities to get closer to that goal. And again, so manifestation, there's something to it and there's science behind it. It's not just willing something to happen. I cannot will that water bottle to fly into my hands. I can't do that, right? But I can, through this process of working with my brain and showing my brain Where I want to go, basically will my future into existence. And I've done this many, many, many, many times. The condo I live in right now was something that I visualized for years, years and years and years and years. I visualized living in this condo, which is kind of a strange thing to think about. And I'm not living in this condo because I visualize specifically, but I'm living in this condo because the visualization marked this event in my life. As something important, and my brain was able to basically optimize my actions in order to get me here. Let me know if that makes sense. Awesome. So Lorena also sharing positivity affects your thoughts, your cellular structure, your muscles, and your entire body. So you might as well have positive thoughts as often as possible. You might as well. I don't have the book here. I do. Here's a great book basically about what's gonna happen scientifically when you are more positive. And it includes health and it includes, like you said, like muscles. It includes everything. A lot of things you wouldn't think of when we think about— excuse me, when we think about positivity, a lot of times we just think about the thoughts in our mind, but it translates to a healthier overall lifestyle. It translates to better relationships. Really cool book. A lot of more science in that, but all true and all happening. Welcome, Sunny. Great to have you here. Sunny's saying, makes sense and works great, which is awesome. That's the goal. Mimi sharing the BTU program in my life is it's a great thing. It's a great thing, right? It is an awesome, awesome thing. BTU is fantastic. For those of you who aren't part of BTU, look out for an email in the next couple of days. I'm going to email a couple of you one-on-one who aren't involved to see if we can kind of work out something special to get you involved in both programs because it's an amazing, amazing program. Lena sharing, I am courageous and a hard worker. So I love these. I love these. Oh, Mimi sharing, that was your positive thing, right? The BTU program in your life, that's a positive thing. That's an awesome thing, Mimi. I love that. Lena sharing, I'm a courageous, hard worker. Absolutely. Absolutely. There's a positive thought. And the more you reinforce that, and this isn't a lesson on beliefs, but the more you reinforce that, the more your brain is going to prove that to be true. It's going to prove that to be true. How true is it that we can make sense of anything? How true is it that we can make sense of anything? Let me know there in the chat box. I know I have a little to catch up on here. Also sharing, I am the solution. I am the solution. How good does that feel? How empowering does that feel? I am the solution. Not only do I have it, I am it. I am it. It's in here. I'm the solution. That's beautiful. By sharing positive thought, life is good. Life is good. Look at all these things we can be grateful for. Look at all these things that we have. We don't have to focus on the things that we don't have. Look at all these things that we have. I don't remember what book it was in where I read it. Actually, it might've been this book talking about the happiest cultures on the planet and the happiest people on earth. Very often are people who have what a lot of us would consider absolutely nothing, live in kind of dirt floors, no roofs, poverty, but still have unbelievable gratitude and happiness because they have their family, right? Because they have their health, because they have the time that they have right then, right there, because they look for the opportunities, they look for the gratitude. And I think that is such an amazing, just an amazing Perspective to see that there are all these things to be grateful for. Look at all this stuff I have behind me. It's books, it's knowledge, and I'm grateful for all that. But with it, like, beyond that, I have a roof over my head. That's amazing. I have a floor underneath my feet. I have clothes on my body. I have health. The fact that we had to miss yesterday's session because I had to go to the dentist— the dentist is there. They're going to take care of me, take care of my teeth so there's no pain, so there's comfort, so they look good. All these different things. There's so much to be grateful for. Life is good. I love that, Barbara. And that's just stuff. That's just stuff, right? Even the floor, that's just stuff. The core. What's the core? The core. I have me, I have my health, I have my partner, I have my family. I get to spend time with the people that I love and care about, especially with technology. I get to check in on the people I love and care about. I get to be here with each and every one of you to help you all and help each other as a community grow. And be inspired by each other. That's amazing. I love that. Lenny sharing, life is good. I like that. Yes, it is. Mimi sharing, and the BTU community and Recovery Secrets. So many positive things, right? Just so many positive things right here. Joanne, I love this. I love this. So Joanne sharing, negativity contracts and positivity expands. That's a beautiful way to think about it, right? As either negativity is closed or contracting. Negativity is going to make your life a lot smaller. Positivity is going to expand everything. It's going to open everything up. And that I think is really, really beautiful because not only is it positivity, but it's opportunity. And the opportunity that really opens up your life. And it's not that the opportunities aren't there when you're negative, but you're closed to it. You are contracting, right? That's awesome, Joanne. I love that. Whichever you focus on, you get more of. I prefer positivity. That's right. If you're gonna choose something, and again, a lot of people are like, Keely, you can't be like 100% positive. I'm like, you're 100% negative. Why can't I be 100% positive? And eventually we find this balance of in between. And it's not that you have to be negative. You can look at reality and still be positive. You can look at reality and still take a positive view and still see the good things and still see the gratitudes, right? And so I look back over the last couple of years when the world has just been in absolute chaos for one reason or another, and we've all been kind of going through this, this global crisis. And I can see that things were really, really hard for a lot of people and really bad situations happened. And that's not negativity. That is the reality. And I can also see how many opportunities we had as a result of that and how much gratitude we were able to express as a result of that. I was thinking about this this morning. My landlord was here actually, Ryan and his wife are my landlord. So you know them now. They were here. Ryan was fixing our deck a couple of weeks ago, maybe a week ago. And he, I, he had one of his kids here and there's handprints on, on the window. And I was like, whose handprint? Like, why are there handprints? And I have small hands. I was like, why are there handprints on the window? And then I learned that he has kids here, right? And so I was thinking about that, and I was just thinking about how they homeschooled them for a while during, during the pandemic and stuff, and how he had expressed extreme gratitude for teachers and the fact that they had so much to do and so many students to deal with, and so grateful that they were able to be on Zoom and did so much with the kids, and grateful for that system. That system that we had taken for granted previously was now something that We were extremely grateful for. And those people that we had taken for granted previously, whether it's healthcare, first responders, whatever it is, teachers, everyone, line workers, I mean everyone, we realized how important every single person was. From shipping to manufacturing to teaching to healthcare to every single aspect of the economy. We realized how important everyone was and we were able to express gratitude for those people. So that was really, really cool. I love that. Isabella sharing, this group makes me feel positive. When I missed these lessons for an entire week due to illness, I was sad. So it's going to change, and that's a really good indication that there's something positive in your life. My workouts make me feel positive. If I miss my workouts for a number of days or a number of weeks for whatever reason, I have less energy. I don't feel as positive. They continue to increase. There's all sorts of things that will increase your positivity. It's not necessarily one thing fills up your positivity 100%. It's all these little things that add up. Joe sharing, I feel better when I attend Recovery Secrets Live, a positive start to my day, which is awesome. Me too, Joe. Absolutely. Isabella sharing, I try to look in the mirror and tell myself I'm beautiful. That's a beautiful thing. That's an awesome thing to do. And like I shared that story about the lake house, eventually the more you practice positivity, eventually it will become automatic. And it seems like it might be a really long way off. Eventually it will become automatic. In general, all areas can use improvement and positivity. A lot of people saying all areas, right? Ghislaine also sharing, all areas. It's a daily process. So what I challenge you to do now is I want you to pick one area, one area to focus on today, one area to focus on today. So it could be your relationship, positivity within your relationship. It could be your thoughts. It could be your actions. I'm not gonna limit you to one, but I challenge you to pick one. Pick one and focus on one. It could be relationships with your friends, relationships with your family, with your pets, with your kids. Pick one area and bring as much positivity to that area as possible. If you're gonna pick thoughts, Just lay on the positive thoughts. Lay it on thick. That's what I'll tell people. Lay it on thick. Lay on the positive thoughts. So let me know in the chat box there what area is going to be your focus of today, and then we'll talk about how to take actions in those areas, what sort of actions can improve those areas. Isabella sharing, that's amazing to hear. I need to gain more positivity around the area of not fearing going places with my kids. That's a great thing to work on. I feel like they're going to get injured at, like, at an amusement park, right? So that's a great thing to kind of focus on and to realize That positivity needs a change there. That's an awesome area to focus on. Joy and sharing all areas in my life. Isabella sharing, crazy that you just said that about the condo. I've been visualizing moving back to Manhattan to be closer to my father. I'm applying to the building lotteries this week. That's awesome. That's great, Isabella. Right? And so when we visualize something, we're saying to our brain, this is important to me. Our brain is going to give us What we give it. I think about this with kids and with pets as well, right? And so my dog Shiloh, he's amazing. He can also be insane depending on what kind of energy and what I give him. If I give him his time in the morning, if I give him fetch and his breakfast and a walk and some snuggle time, I give him his things, he will give the world to me. So when he was, you know, a service dog and we were actually doing stuff all day, now he just kind of, he just hangs out in the office, right? But when we were doing stuff all day, He'd be super good if we were at school, if I was doing student teaching, if we were visiting elementary schools or hospitals or whatever we were doing, or if we were going grocery shopping or if we were working. It doesn't matter. He was amazing. And our brains are kind of the same way. When we get— what we feed them is what we get out of them. So we take care of them, and if we give them good things, it's going to give us good things in return. And that's the same or different way of saying you get what you focus on. We focus on the positive things, our brain is going to give us, it's going to guide us to the positive things. Our brain is just a machine that we're using, right? And you can think of it like it's the steering wheel of your life. You are steering it. If you steer it this way, it's going this way. It's going to bring your whole being, your whole body, your entire emotional state that way. Your brain is the steering wheel, right? If we turn the wheel this way, your brain's going that way. So whatever you focus on is what you get. And Isabella, I hope you get one of those condos, apartments. Name of this book is called Learned Optimism. Pretty famous book by Martin Seligman. He is considered, I believe, the father of positive psychology. Super interesting. There's different thoughts in regard to psychology and, and in regard to positive psychology as well. So he's kind of the guy that spearheaded positive psychology. And so you'll see some things in that book. I mean, really just interesting, good book, especially if you're looking for a little bit more science behind the things that we do and why we do those things. But you'll also see typically anyone that's the founder, the father, the spearhead, a lot of times go a little bit further than what we would consider now kind of socially acceptable, or a little bit further in regard to how they would like to apply it, which is just generally how it is. So you have Freud and you have like Albert Bandura and you have Martin Siegelman and all of these different people, and they believe in their thing 100,000%, which is why they're able to spearhead it and learn so much about it. To the point where it's like, this is the only way to do things. And I'm not saying that's totally the energy that you're going to get in that book, but in any psychology area, that's what you want to watch out for. The people who write the book, they're going to be 100% into that thing, which is great. That's what we want because we want to learn about that thing. But we want to also understand that all of these things work and we want to figure out kind of a process that works best for us. So what we want to take out of that to apply to our life and what we want to kind of leave there.

Awesome.

Joe sharing another good read, 8 Secrets to Powerful Manifesting by Mandy Morris. It's a great one. Jeanette sharing, love the positivity in this community, community, which is an awesome thing. Joanne sharing, relationship to self. So that's what you want to focus on. So what's your area that you— one area, I want you to choose one area that you want to focus on specifically today. But if you want to take this challenge through the next week, you want to focus on that area for the next week, I would challenge you to do that as well. Challenge you to do that as well. And again, when we pick one area, it's not that only that area needs improvement. It's actually kind of what we were talking about yesterday with Ryan. And what I had shared yesterday with Ryan is if we just do one thing and we do that consistently, then we can build off of that later on, right? So if we just pick one thing and we can get that into our life consistently, then we can change our focus, or rather add to our focus something else. That thing will become automatic. So if we choose, okay, It's my relationship or my relationship with myself, my thoughts. Let's choose thoughts first, right? Choose my thoughts. I focus on that in regard to positivity until it becomes automatic. Then I can focus on positivity in my relationship, and all these things will infect each other in a good way too. The more you're positive internally, the more that's gonna ripple out externally. So, Joanne, sharing relationship to self, that's an amazing one. That's an amazing one. And so for each one that you choose, so my last question was what Is the one area that you want to focus on today to bring more positivity to? Whatever you choose, then I want you to follow up with how. How are you going to bring more positivity to the thing that you chose? Barbara's sharing, clearing out my clutter, visualizing a wonderful clear space. This is a great example of bringing positivity to anything and everything. Anything and everything. So with something like cleaning, even though it's something that maybe we like the outcome of, We can, I say, like hem and haw. We can drag ourselves through the process and we can complain through the process, or we can bring a more positive mindset through the process. I'm so grateful I have all of these things that I have to clean up. I have all these things. If you have clutter, you have things, you have extra things. If you have clutter, maybe you have such a busy life that things get off track during the week. I know that's true for us. As I'm looking around here, I just While we started, I just kind of cleared some papers off the desk here, but there's papers here and there's papers there, and there's little things that kind of add up. There's a book over there, stray book here, that add up during the week because, you know, we're busy and doing things. And like this book, now, now this book is out. That's going to become clutter if I forget to put it away after the fact. So there's things that you can be grateful for, which is a version of positivity, to bring more positivity to these everyday things. So sharing, interesting, you choose positivity. As I was talking with my oldest son's father about focusing on It's a beautiful thing to focus on. It's a great conversation to have. You might have people in your life where you notice the energy that they bring into the room is just positive. I know for me, there's certain people in my life— I don't interact with like a ton of people on a day-to-day basis, but on a week-to-week basis, there's actually a lot of women that I work out with in the morning, and there's a handful of women that I golf with. And so when we golf, we golf in groups of 4, so I'm typically paired with one of them. But we're all grouping together in a group of 4, and it's very obvious the people that are positive. I love get— there's, there's one woman in particular besides my mom, of course, that I love getting paired with when we golf because she's so positive and she brings such a great energy forward. It makes me, makes me bouncy. It makes me happy. And then on the contrary, it's not that I don't like being paired with other people, but I know that I need to bring even more energy basically to counteract any negative energy. That comes from other people that I either work out with or golf with. So it's something that you can bring to conversations. You'll notice with the people in your life. And if you have relationships where you can have these conversations, I know there's a handful of relationships in my life where these conversations happen all the time. How can we be more positive? Or just changing the subject and that being an okay thing to do, or just focusing on the good things and making that pivot in a conversation if it accidentally gets into a place where you don't want it. It's an awesome thing. Areas in my life— in Scooby-Doo— areas in my life that could do with positivity improvement? Just about all of them. I'm still not 100% confident I'll make the 180-degree change required to create the life I desire, but I'll focus on my relationship with money. So that's okay. And this is a little bit off track here, but something I want to address. If you're not 100% confident in yourself, in the journey, In the fact that full recovery is possible, that's okay. And the reason that I'm saying that is I didn't have that confidence until basically the journey was over. I had no idea what I was doing, and that's just the truth. I had no idea what I was doing. I kept trying things, and I kept trying to figure out what I was doing until eventually I did know what I was doing. And even then, I wasn't 100% sure that it would work, and it was like it was like a guess basically. And okay, like, let me just try this thing, see if it works. And then you kind of build that confidence up and up and up. It's like, this thing has worked great. Okay, so how can we apply to this thing? This thing has worked. And if these things have worked, then I'm confident then this next thing will work. So it builds over time. And I think that's an important thing to just press on, that you don't have to feel 100% about anything right now, even positivity. If you're like, I'm never going to be at the point where I'm 100% positive, that's okay. We're just working on increasing our positivity. We're working on increasing our confidence and Basically just seeing how high it can go and how much change we can make, right? And so if we can't make that 180, or we don't believe that we can make that 180-degree change right now, in 6 months we might feel differently about that. We might have more confidence, we might have more momentum and say, wait a minute, wait a minute, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I can do this. And you might feel almost like a switch flip where you have that confidence, where you believe in that change. Okay, so focusing on your relationship with money. So for those of you who have, who have presented what area of positivity are you going to focus on today, this is where the challenge comes. This is where the challenge comes. So don't skip out on this. Don't skip out on this. I want you to share how are you going to bring positivity to that. How are you going to bring positivity to that? All right, that's your challenge. What one area and how are you going to bring positivity Through that, and we'll discuss them as we go here. Delaying sharing. Delaying sharing. Today's focus is getting to and from many clients. I've been in the car less than 2 months and just hired a driver this weekend. I keep my mindset positive and this guy just fell into my lap after 2 months of Uber. This was a great relief. That's awesome. That's awesome. So keeping positive during that, that time where you're doing all of that driving, and then I'm not sure if there's conversation with that driver, but keeping positive during that time where now you're being driven, that's an amazing thing. the focus now. I love that. I love that. And you kind of put yourself out there. It sounds like you were visualizing this, maybe not even visualizing. And visualizing doesn't always have to be this big process that we teach it as. It can really just be thinking about it, right? So I'm thinking about, this is something that I want. This is something that I want. It doesn't have to be so intensive as we talk about visualization, but that's awesome. And I love that, right? So I kept my mindset positive and this guy just fell into my lap. These opportunities, when we keep ourselves positive, we keep ourselves open, and that's what it feels like. They just fall into our lap. And so it's not so much work, it's not so much effort, honestly, to succeed and to achieve those goals when we keep— we've talked about before keeping an open heart, but when we keep positive and we're focused on the future, these things just, they literally seem to click into place sometimes, which is awesome. Doesn't mean there's no effort, but It's awesome. So I'm trying to start with the things I'm grateful for first, waking up in the morning. So whatever it is that you chose for the thing that you wanna focus on today, whether it was your relationship, your thoughts, your finances, your job, just general commuting, whatever it is that you chose, how can we bring positivity forward? And then we'll, if you have any questions, feel free to get them in as well. But how can we bring that positivity forward? What actions basically can we take in order to bring positivity to those areas? So today we already talked about the good things list. We talked about the good things list, which is just writing 3 good things each day. Now, if you're focused on— if you, you want your one focus to be on your relationship and bringing positivity to your relationship, no one is telling you that you can't make that good things list 3 good things about your partner, or 3 good things About your relationship. One time, this is a long time ago now, but I took— I went to the dollar store and I got a 52 deck of cards and I hole punched the corner of all of them and I got like a ring. So I put them on a ring and then I put paper and I taped paper over the cards. So it was just, they were all blank basically. And I wrote 52 reasons why I love Brad, right? And I gave him that as a gift. And on each one I had a different reason why I love him. Now, that's just a fun creative exercise, right? That was a way that I brought more positivity to my relationship. And in a sense, what it also was was 52 reasons I was grateful for him, right? And you don't even have to give that. You could write one positive thing all year in a journal, one positive thing a day all year. And then you can either just revisit that in times of stress and times of negativity within your relationship. You can give that to them as a gift and show them that gratitude in that way, there's all sorts of things that you can do about that. So I want you to think about what sort of actions can I bring, whether they're internal, external, to the one thing that I'm focusing on to bring more positivity into it. I have to take my kids to Manhattan to stay with my father for a month while his girlfriend visits her mom in Brazil. It's hard for me to go with the kids all that way, but I will let my— I will tell myself, let my feet do the walking and just take baby steps. There's a great way to also bring positivity is take this big, big mountainous thing and break it down into pieces. Just break it down into pieces, piece by piece, step by step. Focus on each thing. So we're not focused on this big, big whole thing and how it will maybe go or won't go or the things that could go wrong. And let's just go step by step by step by step. That's awesome, Isabella. That's a great thing to do. This is awesome. So Joe sharing, I was talking to my oldest son's father about some tough stuff yesterday. For 6 hours, and I kept coming back to the positive. It was emotionally intense processing and shared memories with him. I had some aha moments, and it was nice having it all out of my head. We're in a different place today than 15 years ago. I'm going to continue working on this part of my past and continue talking and processing it and keeping it positive. That's an awesome thing to do in relationships in general and in conversation. Let's bring it back to the positive. Let's focus on the future. Let's focus on the things that We can do something about. Now, that doesn't mean there's not a time and space for feeling emotions, validating emotions, all sorts of stuff like this, like that, but also focusing on the positive. I'm so grateful that we're here together. You know, I know we're having an issue right now, but I'm really grateful that the issue looks like this, or the issue is about this. We're arguing about something really small when in the past we're like, we had all these really, really big things to work with. We're arguing about something, we're giving each other the cold shoulder when in the past we were screaming at each other and it was over something big and it would last for days or weeks or months. And this argument lasts for 20 minutes, right? And so just bringing it back in all moments, in every moment, you can bring it back to the positive. You can think about something to be grateful for. You can focus on different things. And that's the summation of everything that we've talked about here today is basically Where is your focus internally, externally, in regard to your actions, your thoughts, your relationships, your finances? Where is your focus? Is your focus on saving as much money as possible? Is your focus on making as much money as possible? Now, I'm not saying either of those things are positive or negative, but where is your focus? What do you want to focus on? I used to get stressed out. We were in a really, really tight financial situation. And I used to get stressed out when Brad would buy a book, like a used book or something, a couple dollars, $3. And I used to focus on all of this money that we didn't have. We can't afford that. We can't do that. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And all these things when he was focused on this $3 is an investment that's going to allow us to make money in the future. And so I was very closed in that regard specifically. And he was very open in that regard. And he was being very positive about the future investment is going to allow us To grow and move forward. And I was being very negative and very guarded about it. Like, we know we have to stay, stay exactly where we are. I had no plans basically for making the future all that much better. I was focused on doing what we could with what we had, and there was a time and place for both of those things. He was looking to improve the situation. So it's 2 very, very different mindsets like that. Delaine, I love that Delaine focused on making as much money as possible. That's a great thing. The, there's a lot of benefits to being able to do that, right? And to just think of opportunities. Where can I make more money? It's not a bad thing to cut, cut expenses. Certainly not a bad thing to cut that. But how would I make more money as well? How can I focus on producing more, giving more? Because when we're making more money, what's happening? We're giving more value. If you get a raise in your job, I don't care what your job is, you're providing more value at the very least to the company, at the very least to your coworkers, even if you work alone or remote or digital. You're providing more value, and that is something that is fulfilling in and of itself. So not only do you get the financial reward, which you can use in different areas of your life, but you're giving more value. If you make more money, if you're earning more money, if you get a raise, you're, you're providing a higher value to the business, the company, the school, the organization that you work for, or the individuals, the clients that you work for. That's a really cool thing. So something to think about there. All right, Sharon, what actions can I take? I can do processing on my money issue. Question mark, exclamation point. Yes, totally, because that would help resolve it, which in turn would positively impact my relationship with money. That's great, right? So you can turn that question mark into an exclamation point, just exclamation point only, because you're seeing the outcome. Because if I process my money issue, here's what's going to happen: it's going to resolve it, which in turn is going to positively impact my relationship with money. Awesome, I love that. Awesome. Joint sharing: every time I have a negative thought come up, immediately replace it with a positive I love this, Joanne. Here's something we didn't talk about today that we'll talk about in future sessions when we talk about positivity. One negative thought. How many positive thoughts? Last thing here before we kind of wrap up. How many positive thoughts do you think? And I know some of you know the answer. It takes to equal out one negative thought. So they weigh differently, right? How many positive thoughts do you think it takes to equal out one negative thought? Let me know in the chat box there. I need to grab my water. What do we think? Give me a number. How many positive thoughts per negative thought just to have equilibrium? Joe sharing 4 to 5. Give a minute for more answers here. How many? Give me a number in that chat box. Barbara sharing 5. Isabella sharing 1. Do you have another minute here? What do we think? For those of you who haven't answered yet, I'll give you a hint. We haven't gotten it yet. We've gotten close, but we haven't gotten it yet. Sunny sharing 10. Tina sharing 7. Ding ding ding ding! Janet sharing seven. You guys know the answer. Awesome job there, right? And with this something we talk about unbroken to unbreakable. So seven positive thoughts to equal out one negative thought. That means if I have one, let we'll say we'll use an example, and I use this example all the time. Something negative happens. Somebody cuts me off, maybe flips me off. This happened the other day. They didn't flip me off, but I saw saw this happen, right? Driving the car, somebody flips me off. Let's say I almost flipped everybody off. Somebody flips me off. And that's a negative thing that happened, right? There's my one negative thing. I need 7 things just to equal out, meaning just to make that event not something that I'm automatically going to be focused on. So let's say Brad brings me a flower. That's great. Let's say he got me a flower that morning and then somebody flipped me off. That flower is not the thing that I'm going to remember because that's only one positive thing. So he would need to get me 7 flowers just to equal out, just for those events to weigh. The same in my brain, just for them to weigh the same. He would need to give me 8 flowers, which he has done before, for it to outweigh that negative thing and to— for the flowers and that interact— those interactions to be the protruding thing that happened that day, the thing that kind of stands out that day. So let me know if that makes sense. So internally, when we have a negative thought, we need 7 positive thoughts to outweigh that negativity. And so I want you to think about Positivity like dirty water, right? So imagine this was full of dirty water and you could see through this whole thing. How much clean water would we need to pour into this for the dirty water to flow out and it be all totally clean? A lot more than just one bottle's worth, right? So it's the same concept there. So Joanne, this is an awesome, awesome start. My encouragement to you now, knowing this information about This 7-to-1 ratio is to challenge yourself. Now, if you don't get to 7, that's okay. But I've done this exercise in different groups and coaching that we've done, and it's super powerful. Challenge yourself if you can, if you're willing to do 7 positive thoughts for every negative thought. If you really want to make an impact, if you want to make a change in your brain a lot faster, it doesn't mean you won't be making changes just doing one. That's still improvement. If you want to make that change a lot faster, go for 7. And guess what? If you fall short of 7 and you get 5, that's amazing, amazing, amazing. And if you want to tip the scale that much faster, see if you can go for 8. Okay, so there's no pressure to do that because where you are is a great, great start. Just swapping one for one is a great, great start. But if you can aim for 7, again, even if you fall short of that, you're going to be in a really good position. You're going to be changing that brain a lot faster. You're going to be strengthening that muscle a lot more and getting to that automatic a lot faster. Okay, so amazing, amazing session here today, all about positivity. Thank you so much for the engagement. Again, your action for today is to pick that one area, focus on that one area, and to bring the actions that you either thought about, maybe wrote them down today, or shared within the community to bring that positivity forward. To that area. So we'll give one more minute here for questions. Throughout the rest of the week, we have some awesome, awesome things planned. So today, of course, was for processing. We're gonna talk about indications that working with a pro is a good idea, when it's a good idea, maybe when it's not such a good idea. And we're gonna start to distinguish between those things, meaning when a clinician is going to be really helpful and what, where they can be really helpful and where we want you to really focus on being an independent healer. We're gonna talk about responsibility, excuses, and blame as well this week, and we're gonna Vote on a topic for Friday. So a lot of awesome, awesome things coming up. That's your action for today. Again, we'll give another minute. I know there's a little delay here, but amazing job here today. Thank you so much for hanging in there with us yesterday with that last-minute change. And today we were a little late. We had a little Wi-Fi issue, last-minute change. So thank you so much for that. You've been amazing. I love you. I believe at the very highest level. I look forward to seeing you all bright and early tomorrow morning, ready to rock and roll. We're almost halfway through the week. We have three more recovery secret sessions. You're doing awesome.

You're doing fantastic.

Keep chipping away. way at this. You've got this. I look forward to, and you're encouraged to share in the group any times where you feel like this positivity has impacted your life, or rather you've brought something positive and it's made an obvious impact in your life, or not obvious impact. Feel free to share those things in the group as, as well. So I love you, I believe in you, and I'll see you bright and early tomorrow.

Hey everybody, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you want to learn more about how you can coach with me directly, there's a link In the description you can check out. There's absolutely no pressure. The main thing is I wanted you to get value from this episode here, but I hope you have a fantastic day and I'll see you in the next one.