How to Become a More Positive Person
A short YouTube talk (by Daniel Borschel) teaching the "ladder of perception," a four-step framework to explain how incoming information becomes interpretation, then affects identity, and finally shapes intentions and actions. The speaker advises managing what you consume, reinterpreting events to avoid taking them personally, and using journaling to trace and change negative patterns. The video closes with a call to subscribe and an invitation to join a paid coaching program (High Performance Experience).
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Now, I want to share with you what I call the ladder of perception. It's just a way of understanding how your mind works. So often we go through the day, something happens and turns us into a bad mood, and for the rest of the day, we're kind of wrecked and ruined and upset and frustrated. And it's not until we go home, have five glasses of wine, that we finally chill out. Right. So what can you do in the middle of the day to get yourself back? It's just helping you understand, well, how do your thoughts work? How is it that you're getting into these times in your life where you're just emotionally so upset or so frustrated, or you feel like you're just not in control? And how can we use that same reasoning to figure out how can you shape a more positive mindset? Because we all want to feel better, right? We want to have more positive thoughts. It's just hard when the day is crazy. We all want to have a lot more buoyancy and vibrancy and pop to our life, but it's hard when we keep taking in so much information that's not always positive. Right? Right. So this is going to be a way to explain how to get you in a better mindset. And it all begins with this first part. The first thing that happens to shape your way you think is you get some information. Right. Super basic, I know, but hold with me for a second. Sometimes we don't realize how much information is coming in that is turning us into a negative person. And sometimes information happens and we grab hold of it and. And make it more than it is. I mean, has anyone said to you in the last couple months, hey, it's not a big deal, calm down. If they had, it's because there's this information coming in and you're grabbing it in a specific way that's turning your mind towards negativity. I know this sounds very, very basic, but I promise we have to start with what's coming in. Right. It's just that old saying, garbage in, garbage out. So what I tell people, if you want to have a healthy mind, first and foremost, pay attention to the information that is coming in. What are you consuming? What are you looking at? What are you watching? What are you reading? Who are the people who are around you? All of that is shaping your mind, which I know you already know. Here's the question. When's the last time you did sort of an assessment or an analysis of the people and the information coming in? Like, what blogs are you reading? A lot. What do most of your emails seem to say? Who are the people who are around you? What's the emotion and the energy and the information they're giving you? I know this sounds really crazy, but I am so, so controlling of that in my life. I don't have a lot of negative people who are always giving me negative information. I don't consume very much media at all. I don't watch horror films or I don't consume a lot of information that just tends towards the negative at all. Not because I'm Pollyanna, because I understand how it's going to affect me when long term. So pay attention to the information you have coming in second as the ladder goes up. Well, we get the information and then we interpret it one way or another. This is where obviously we know we see something, some information comes in, we interpret it as bad or good, positive, negative, something I need to interact with and react to or not. The challenge is most people take little pieces of information and they blow it up and they interpret it to mean something very personal and very negative. If you're in a place where you feel like you have a lot of arguments and fights, it's rarely about what's coming in because we all deal with negative information or bad things or the day gets interrupted. It's how do you interpret it? Then as we move up, we move to identity, right? This is. What did I see? What does it mean, positive or negative? Then it says, what does this mean about me specifically? Right? And this is where people take things very, very, very personal. You know, someone comes in to work and says, well, I have some bad news. We're going to have to let some people go today. And then they interpret it, oh, my God, this company's going to fail. Oh, my gosh, I'm going to have to quit. Oh, my gosh, I might get fired. Oh, my gosh, what's going to happen in the future? And then identity. Here it is again. I failed again. Here it is again. I never seemed to get good things from me. Here it is again. I just don't seem like I'm deserving of anything. And people take things at a personal level into their identity over a period of time. Now you can see how this ladder is building because negative information can come in. You interpret it negatively and then you take it personally, negatively. And this is what happens to people. They don't realize. Little simple things. Little simple things. Someone cuts you off in traffic. How do you interpret that? See, when someone cuts me off in traffic, I go, oh, well, they didn't see me or, oh, they were trying to get ahead here. Other people, you know what they do? They're like that son of a. They get completely angry, they completely freak out. They say, all drivers are horrible. I hate this commute. This sucks. And then they say to themselves that I did take it so personally that they say, you know what? I'm going to get back at this person. I'm not going to be wronged. I'm not going to be disrespected. So they speed in front of them, cut them off because they took someone passing in front of them to be what, Disrespect to who they are. Because they're a person who always feels disrespected. If you always feel disrespected, what are your thoughts going to be like? So you see how all this is starting to build to how you feel, and then it shapes what you intend in the world. What are you going to do? Right? Your mind is all focused towards this one simple set of questions. It's what does all this information mean? How do I need to interpret it? Pay attention to it. Not pay attention to it. Important, not important. Good, bad. Then we take it to us. What does this mean to me personally? What does it say about me as a human? What am I dealing with here? And then it ultimately shapes our intentions. So the next time you find yourself in emotional craziness or, or you feel really upset, or you're saying, I don't know why I'm thinking this way, you can step it back. What did I hear? How did I interpret that? What did it mean to me? What do I intend to do? Because all of that led to what you ultimately do, the initiative that you take in the world, what you're actually going to be doing. So here's the payoff. When you're doing things that you are not proud of, when you are doing things that you think like, I don't understand why I. I'm not taking more action. I don't understand why I keep beating myself up. I don't understand why I keep getting in fights with the people that I love. I don't understand why I can't stay more persistent towards my goals. If that ever happens, just take a pause and go, you know what? I need to think about what is happening here. Because it's the way that you're perceiving in the world that is controlling how much you progress in the world, right? And a lot of people, when they're having negative behavior, they just think it's happening to them. And I say, oh, let's just step it back. Okay, you were mean to your husband. Okay, you found that you were really short with them. Where did that come from? And then we can just step back. How are you feeling about yourself in that circumstance or that situation that led this this way? What happened? What did your husband do? What did he not do and how did you interpret it? And ultimately, what did you see or not see and experience? I know it sounds so basic, but, but try it. If you can work this through on a couple different examples from your recent past, just think about those times when you really struggled or you didn't feel good. Go through this, write it down, journal it, and you'll start to feel a lot more understanding about who you are and how your mind works.
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'd 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, Share this video with anybody who could be inspired by it today. And thanks one more time for being part of my community.
