Believe in Joy: How to Find Happiness in a World Full of Negativity

Good morning, Believe Nation! Today's message is Believe in Joy. Over to you, John Travolta.

I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going. I wake up every morning.

I was always a person with a lot of confidence, and I never took very seriously anyone making less of me. I think you learn by your failures and you learn by your mistakes, but you don't take them to heart because as soon as you do, it takes the spirit out of you. It kind of— you die a little bit. Look, the world is dark as— just, it's as bad as it gets. You look in the newspaper, it's bad news. You look over your shoulder, it's bad news. If you want me to cry, I'll cry right now for you because I can find so much sadness in the world. I can find so much tragedy. I I can find so much heartache that it will just be massive. Okay, now where's the joy? Where's the spirit? Where's the fun? That's the goal to me. So I've never understood why so much is harped on the negative, because negative is easy, dark is easy, and doing it artfully, yes, we must all do that. But I find it much more interesting to find out where the joy is. So during those times, I probably perceived negative, but I went for life. I learned how to become a jet pilot. I traveled the world. I rubbed elbows with all sorts of people, and I learned what they were about, and it was feeding me, you know. I had a choice. I could have believed that things were finished, things were over, that life is bad, that life's not worth it, uh, why don't we all die, or something like that. It's just not, not my nature, you see. So my feeling was that you get through that the best you can by living life fully. And using the spirit of other people to feed you, and you feed them, and you rise above it all that way.

I think this is a really important message for entrepreneurs. I think to be a success as an entrepreneur, you have to, you have to be optimistic. You have to choose joy over negativity. Yes, you could be paranoid, and only the paranoid survive, but you have to feel like it's gonna work out. Otherwise you get so lost down in your hole that you never come out. Entrepreneurs are the ones who make it out. Being a successful entrepreneur is one of the hardest things you're ever gonna do in your life, right? The failure rates are crazy. 85%, 90% of new businesses will fail. And yet here we are trying to do it, trying to be the ones who beat the odds and survive and build something amazing. Where on paper, you know, the odds are against you. You're trying to do something new that's never been done before. You're not educated for it, you don't have the capital for it, you don't have the resources or connections or family for it. And here you are trying to do it. That's what entrepreneurs do. And so you have to choose joy, you have to be optimistic that it's gonna work out. And I think the thing that entrepreneurs are best at is recognizing that when there is some kind of crisis, when there is something really negative, It's thinking about how do I turn this into a positive? It's the example of when life hands you lemons, you make lemonade and you sell the recipe for it too. That's what an entrepreneur does, right? Life is going to hand you tons of lemons. Life is going to suck in a lot of ways. You're going to get blow after blow after blow in your business life and in your personal life. And if all you do is stay in your hole, you're never going to create anything amazing. You have to look at that crisis that most people would get lost in and say, "Life is terrible," and just complain, right? Most people just complain. When something bad happens to them, they just complain and they blame somebody else. Where the entrepreneur grows from it, builds from it, sees the opportunity in it, gets stronger because of it, and they go off and build something amazing. I think this is ingrained in a lot of entrepreneurs, but if it's not, if it's not you, then I would encourage you to think, like, if you're down in the hole right now, if you've just been given successive blows, ask yourself, where's the opportunity here? How can I take what just happened to me, all of this stuff that really sucks, and turn that into something amazing? Even just asking that question, how do I make this amazing? How do I find the opportunity? Instead of what you're likely currently telling yourself. Why does this always happen to me? When is it going to get better? Right? The complaints. Change your questions to be more optimistic and you'll get better answers. So the question today is, I'm curious, when was a time in your life that you needed the most to believe in joy? Tell me a story. Share it below. Leave in the comments. I'm going to join in the discussion. I also want to give a quick shout out to Elita Torres. From leadgrowdevelop.com. And Lita, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. It really, really, really, really means a lot to me. So thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. And I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso.

I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.

Hey guys, as a special bonus for this video, I'm going to include some extra clips on choosing joy, believing in happiness, that I hope will also inspire you.

I, as you know, I was a bouncer for many years. I remember coming home one night after a big fight, and I run up to the kitchen, I get ice, and I'm— my hand's swollen, and just another day at work. And I was feeling like just bummed about the fact that I was still doing this job after all this time. And at that one moment, I was like, why are people— what's up? Why do people have so much anger? Why do I have to, you know, why is this my daily life to suppress everybody's anger or check everybody's anger that comes into the giant 3,000-person nightclub? And my father, it was so simple, but my father said, You know, Vin, I've traveled around the world. I've been to India, I've been to Russia, I've been to China, I've been all— I've been to South— all through South America, and I've realized something. I said, what? He said, people by and large are good people. Sounded pretty simple, and yet it meant so much. And if you look at my Facebook page, or if you look at the way that all that positive energy— I don't think there's a page in the world in history that harbors as much positive energy as one would see on this Facebook page.

And it's what you put out too.

And it's really that, right? And I say that because— I say that because if you believe that in your heart— and not everybody watching this can say that, or is ready to say that, or is comfortable with themselves enough to say that— but if you really believe in your heart that people by and large are good people. It affects the way that you address the world as you see, post in and post out. I address a world that in my soul I feel is comprised of good people.

My message would just be find peace within yourself, because once you find peace within yourself, the energy that you get usually is reflected and people get that energy off of you, so. And that's what I've been able to find from being, you know, on the negative energy side as a young artist to a grown man that projects positive and peaceful music, but it still has the energy of the young spirit. So it's all within the same realm, but it's just finding yourself and being able to be within yourself and have peace so that way you can project peace. You know, especially on the internet, you know, you can get pulled into a whole lot of negative energy. I've done things where I put pictures up and read comments and then I say something back and I end up arguing with somebody on the internet that I don't even know, and I'm like, you didn't pull me all the way out of my skin. So it's like, it's just the point of knowing, you know, your limitations as far as where you're going and let people take you out of your, your frame of who you are. Like, I'll never allow nobody to take me out of the mind state that I'm supposed to be in, you know what I'm saying? To never let them see me sweat, to never let them see me, you know, deal with adversity as if I can't deal with it.

So If you're going to be successful in creating the life of your dreams, you have to believe that you are capable of making it happen. You have to believe that you have the right stuff and that you're able to pull it off. Now, whether you call it self-esteem, self-confidence, or self-assurance, it's a deep-seated belief that you have what it takes— the abilities, the inner resources, the talents, and the skills to create your desired results. Now, believing in yourself is simply an attitude. Believing in yourself is a choice. You have to choose to believe that you can do anything you set your mind to. Anything at all. Because in fact, you can. It might help you to know that the latest brain research now indicates with enough positive self-talk and positive visualization combined with proper training, coaching, and practice, anyone can learn to do almost anything. Now, I've interviewed thousands of successful people and almost every one of them has told me, "I was not the most gifted or the most talented person in my field, but I chose to believe that anything was possible. And because of that, I studied, I practiced, and I worked harder than the others, and that's how I got to where I am." You know, if Ruben Gonzalez, a 20-year-old living in Texas, hot Texas, can take up the luge, which is a winter sport, and become an Olympic athlete, if Bill Gates, who was a college dropout, can become a multi-billionaire, and Stephen J. Cannell, who was a dyslexic student who failed 3 grades in school, can become a best-selling author and a television producer, then you too can accomplish anything if you'll simply believe it's possible. So make the decision right now to believe that you create all of your experiences, because you do. Let's start creating the ones you want by believing you can. Sounds a little strange, but accepting this level of responsibility is uniquely and inevitably empowering. It means you can do, change, and become anything at all.

If you have this crazy idea, you must believe in it even if no one else does. So when I had the idea to go to every country in the world, that's kind of what it felt like. It felt like this crazy idea. It was like, this just sounds like totally ridiculous and absurd, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. And I realized that if I didn't pursue it, I would always regret it. And that knowledge, that fear of regret, kind of drove me to say yes. And I talked to lots of other people who used very similar language. There's a guy from Portland, Maine, whose crazy idea was to walk across America. And he wasn't even sure, like, how does that work? How much time does it take? Has anyone done this before? It was this crazy idea that wouldn't leave him alone. And so one morning, he left his home in Maine, And he started walking, and 7.5 months later, he arrived in San Francisco. And I talked to him throughout the whole journey. I talked to him in the beginning, and then in the middle, and the end. And I asked him, what were the challenges like, and how did it go? And he said something that stayed with me for the rest of my journey. He said, you know, there were lots of external challenges. It was hard on the body to get used to walking that much. Lots of things went wrong. There were some emotional challenges as well. He had just had a breakup, and he was kind of processing all of this. He said, but what I realized about 2 weeks in, once I started complaining— once I stopped complaining and grumbling about the whole thing, he said, I realized that my task was pretty simple. All I had to do was walk, essentially. And if I did nothing else, if I got up every morning and I made a little bit of progress, then eventually I would reach the goal. Eventually I would arrive in San Francisco. Achieve that goal, reach that destination. And it sounded really simple, but it kind of stayed with me for the final 2 years of my quest, because that's how I felt it was for me too. All I had to do was get to 193 countries. And I had my list of countries. And I was making progress. And if I got stuck somewhere, eventually I'd have to overcome that challenge, but I could go and do some others first. And I liked the logical, analytical progress of it. It's something that related to me. So just keep going. You have to believe in your dream, even if no one else does.