How to Stop Negative Thinking: 7 Practical Tips for Entrepreneurs

Hello, Believe Nation! My name is Evan Carmichael. My one word is believe, and I believe that entrepreneurs will solve all of the world's major problems. So to help you on your journey today, I'm gonna talk about the 7 ways that you can stop your negative thinking. So one of the questions I get asked a lot from entrepreneurs is, how do I stay positive? How do I avoid going into the negative zone? You know, as an entrepreneur, it's really hard I'm trying to get my business going, there's so many pains and struggles and people don't believe in me and I'm always being told to quit and go do the safe, smart thing and get a job. How do I stay positive? How do I stay out of that negative territory? And so today I'm going to share with you my 7 ways on how to avoid negative thinking. And as a little bit of background on myself too, I'm currently going through this in a micro way. One of the things that I've challenged myself is to restructure my thinking around there is no such thing as a bad day. I'm trying to really embody that there's no such thing as a bad day, and I'm gonna share with you how I'm fixing that, how I'm believing in that, that will hopefully help you along your path of what you're negative thinking as well. So step number 1 is catching yourself. This is honestly one of the hardest parts. We don't even know when we're being negative. It's just default. We're on autopilot mode. We're constantly just in survival mode, just trying to put out fires, and we don't even catch the negative thoughts that we have. We just feel them. And I think that's the first biggest challenge is being able to step outside, whether that's you yourself examining your day, whether you in the morning ask yourself how you're feeling or how you felt yesterday, or taking a break at lunch or taking a break in the afternoon or at the evening reflecting back. A lot of people, a lot of entrepreneurs use journals to kind of think about how their day has gone and just reflect, like, was I negative today? Did I have negative thoughts? Was I being positive today, right? Like, any goal that you have, the more that you can track it and measure it, the more likely you're gonna make progress. On it. So what's your method of tracking whether you had a negative day or not? Because if you cannot catch yourself in the moment of being negative, then it's going to be hard for you to change that behavior. So whether it's journaling, whether it's taking time out at specific parts to see if you're being negative, whether it's working with somebody and saying, "Hey, if you catch me being negative, let me know." Having some kind of form of tracking so that you're not just always in autopilot mode and you know exactly when you're being negative. When you figure that out, then you can start fixing it. Step number 2 is turn your negative statements into how questions. This is one of my favorite exercises. If there's a negative thought that you have, something that you can't do this because, or you're so upset because, turn it into a how question. Turn it into a how can I, or turn it into a gratitude statement. So as an example, if you are upset that somebody's often had some major success and you read about their bio and they had the same ideas you did and, you know, they went to Harvard and you didn't, you blame it on, you know, not going to university, then you can ask yourself, instead of just complaining about it and being negative, turn it into a how question. How can I succeed despite not going to Harvard? How can I succeed despite not having the education or the money or the right parents or the right connections? Whatever it is that you're blaming the world on, right? How can I succeed despite? Asking that how-to question takes your negative situation and turns it into something positive. The resourceless into the resourceful, right? You're thinking about how do you make this amazing thing happen now out of this negative situation. So as long as you're staying in this negative down situation, all these limiting beliefs, you're going to stay there. You're going to stay in a negative state. But if you start asking yourself, how do I solve it? You're forcing your brain to think in a positive way. You're forcing your brain to solve the problem, and when you do that, you move to a world of opportunity. The gratitude side of things is maybe you're upset about, you know, the elevator being late. You know, I'm stuck in this elevator and I'm waiting forever for this elevator to come. Or you're stuck in traffic or there's something that's outside your control. For me, the thing that really helps is just thinking about gratitude. So turn your expectations into appreciation. So, you know, it's pretty impressive that there's this magical box that will take me from the ground floor to the 20th floor and I don't have to walk the stairs. Stairs. And yeah, I have to wait an extra 45 seconds for it to come. It's not the end of the world. So just shifting perspective. Again, it starts with catching. You got to catch it. You got to catch when you're being negative. If you can't catch it, you're not going to fix it. If you can catch it, then turn it into a how-to question or just showing appreciation and gratitude instead of false expectations can really help reframe the situation. Step number 3 is create a better environment. One of my go-tos always when you're trying to change a habit, when you're trying to change something that is subconsciously you're always doing, is to make it part of your habit in your daily routines. And so, if you're trying to avoid being negative, then think about, okay, what's negative that's in your life? You know, are there negative people that are in your life? Can you try not to be around them on a daily basis? How can you then bring more positivity into your life on a consistent basis? What are your morning routines? Part of what I do every day is I remind myself, I'm trying to work on that there's no such thing as a bad day, right? So I remind myself every day, one of the things that I read is, "No such thing as a bad day." Try to remember it, try to feel it, yes, remember it. This is something that is important to me. It's back on my radar again consistently, right? Reminding myself of that. Watching videos that are positive and uplifting and how CEOs and entrepreneurs and athletes are dealing with all these negative situations makes me feel more positive. And so designing your environment in your morning routine so that you just fall into that daily helps you start to reframe your thought process. So what I don't want you to do is wake up every day and not know what to do or just fall into a pattern that doesn't support you, that isn't intentional. Where if you spend some time, you spend a day on a Sunday afternoon to think, how do I want my schedule to look like? What does a morning routine look like for me that will allow me to be more positive and eliminate negativity from my life? And when I am faced with negativity, I'll have the tools to fight it. What does that morning routine look like? With intention, create it and then follow it every day. Like, I want to wake up every day and just follow my routine. I don't have to think first thing in the morning. I just fall into my routine and I took the time to create a routine that supports the belief system that I'm trying to build.

Tip number 4 is pay attention to the words that you use. The words that you use to describe situations will often create the emotions that can follow you throughout the day. So watch out for the words that you use. I'm personally working on this a lot. So when annoying situation happens, whether it's a customer that's not happy or I'm stuck in traffic, you know, it comes over like, ah, I can't believe this is happening. You say, damn it, shoot, drop the F-bomb. So many things that you can just throw out there when something annoying comes your way. But here's the thing, emotion on a chemical level can last anywhere from a few seconds up to 90 seconds. After that, it's often the labels that you put. So here's what I'm doing. Anytime something really frustrating happens, I label it as, "It's a pickle, and how do I solve it?" Just me saying that it's a pickle, no matter how bad it is, first of all cracks me up, makes me laugh, and really at the end of it makes me focus on how do I solve this thing. And really labeling it like that makes it more manageable for me. So what I want you to do is pay attention to the words that you use anytime something difficult or annoying happens. Are you cursing? Are you just physically just really turning red and yelling at your dog? I hope not. But it's important that you pay attention to the words that you use. They have a lot of power. So next time something annoying happens, pay attention to the words you use and change them. Because once you change the words that you use and the labels that you place on your environment, you can either become more positive or more negative.

Number 5 is Model Success. I love Model Success. It's one of my go-tos always when I'm trying to figure out how to do something that I don't know what to do with. One of the things that I always remind myself with this negative-positive thing is there's people who have way worse situations. Like, I'm actually really blessed and really fortunate, and so are you. You think about where you're at in life, the fact that you have a computer, you have internet, you can watch this video. You're ahead of most people in the world, and there's a lot of people, some of your heroes, people you look up to, who have way less than what you already have right now. Surrounding myself with those stories consistently helps me remember that they were able to do it with a lot less than what I have now. I can do it too. It served both as tactical, right? Like, here's what you can do, here's how they did it, but also motivational, inspirational, because by following Their stories, just by understanding that these people grew up with such bad family situations, such poor resources, such limited access to everything, and made it out and built these amazing businesses and had these insane careers. Watching that helps me. And early on in my career, before YouTube, it was a book. I was reading books of successful entrepreneurs, and this is one book that had a couple pages per entrepreneur. I'd read one every day. Just not read a whole book, just a couple pages. You have time to read 3, 4 pages, I'm a person. And again, it gave me the motivational boost, the inspirational boost, as well as tactics. And now I use my videos, right? By seeing these successful people come from nothing, have to deal with so much, I think, ah, I'm complaining about this stuff, where these people have done such amazing things and had to deal with all of that in their lives. So having that really helped me be able to overcome it. And if you model success, find the people who've gone through what it is that you are going through and come out the other side, both from inspiration and from tactics, it'll help you accomplish your goal as well. Tip number 6 is have an accountability partner. I find it really helpful when you're trying to follow through on a new habit to have somebody in your life who holds you accountable, who says, "Hey, you're not doing the thing that you said you were going to do. You know, you asked me to keep you accountable and you're not doing the thing that you said was important to you." I find that that's really important because we will let ourselves down more than we'll let other people down. And sometimes we need a reminder. And so if I look at my habit of the, there's no such thing as a bad day. I told Nina, I told my wife, I said, hey Nina, if you hear me complaining about something negative, I want you to remind me that there's no such thing as a bad day. And when she does, it's like, oh, you're right, yeah, you're right, okay, okay, okay. And I try to adjust, but like, that's the process. It's catching the negativity in the moment. I told people on my team, Your team, yes, I told Lily just a second ago. No such thing as a bad day. I told them on my team, I said, hey, listen, I'm trying to build this habit. There's no such thing as a bad day. If you find me falling off track, I want you to catch me. And their default reaction was like, you're always positive, you don't complain about stuff. I know, that's great. I'm 95% positive, but that 5% when I might be complaining, I might be upset, just remind me there's no such thing as a bad day. So having people to hold me accountable when I forget, when I lapse, you know, and it's something that I say is important to me. And so some people may be afraid, so finding people in your life who, you know, will stand up to you and say, "Listen, I'm only doing this because you told me to do this." Those kind of people I think is important. When you commit to somebody else, you have somebody else to hold you accountable, you're much more likely to follow through with anything. And tip number 7 is remember your one word. I should put the books back up. We're talking about your one word, we gotta have the books. Kinda makes sense, right? Stay. Stay books. When you know, when you have the self-awareness to know what it is that you stand for, right? What your one word is, what the most important core value is in your life, then it's much more easy to stay on the positive track. Because you wanna, for me it's belief, right? I want to believe more. I want to believe in myself. I want to believe in other people more. And your one word is always something positive. Right? I've never had someone whose one word was negative. Whose one word was hate or kill or destroy. It's always something positive. And so, it's an easy way to get back to the positive spot inside of you. So if you're designing your environment around, so for me, believe, right? Or just reminding yourself or you're reading your credo on a daily basis or create an environment that is your one word for you. I want believe to be everywhere around me. My office, when I walk in, is believe. My videos are believe. They ooze believe. The content I make is around believe. The things that I feed my head with is around believe. It's important. So when you can design your environment, your routine, and everything that you absorb on a daily basis around your one word, the most important core value that makes you feel great, you're much more likely to stay positive. So that's my take on the 7 ways to stop your negative thinking. I made this video because Amavin Bonano asked me to. So there's a top you'd like me to cover in a future 7 Ways video, check out the link in the description and you can go and cast your vote. I'd also love to know what did you think of this video? Which one was the most important point for you? How are you going to stop your negative thinking? Did I miss an 8, 9, 10 that you want to add to the list? Leave your thoughts in the comments below and I'm excited to see what you guys have to say. I also want to give a quick shout out to Jelena Ostrowska. Thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. Doing the review on your YouTube channel, sharing it on your Twitter account as well. I really, really, really appreciate the support, and I'm so glad that you enjoyed my book. So thank you guys so much for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love. I'll see you soon.