84. Why Negative Feels Normal

Hey, my friend, welcome back to Leadership in a Nutshell where we're cracking the code of the driven mind that crazy people like you and I have. I'm grateful to be with you here for episode 84 where we're going to talk about why negative feels normal. Like, what? Are you kidding me? Why? My God, Kenny. I just. I feel like I wake up and I'm frustrated and there's negativity everywhere, and it feels freaking normal. Like, what's going on here? Let's talk about that today, my friend. Last week I came to you talking about, you know, the challenge with Thanksgiving and wrapped some gratitude in there. And today's episode as well is like, really? Any of these episodes in Leadership In a Nutshell are not designed to be time specific. Sure, I record at certain times and I might mention things, but I hope there are episodes that you can come back and revisit, and I hope this is one that you'll share with team members of yours and you'll share with family and friends, because you probably can't argue with me too much that it appears that negativity is a new normal. And that's why I want to put it on the table today. And let's talk about it, you know, where. One of the things that's fascinating when we look at human development and behavior change and personal growth and the areas that I choose to invest my life's work and my time and energy and focus in, is that a lot of times, you know, we don't necessarily always do what's right. We do what's familiar. And so I want you to think about that for your own life. When it comes to relationship, when it comes to business, when it comes to team members, when it comes to your money mindset, when it comes to your abundance thinking or scarcity thinking, are you doing and thinking what's right for you or. Or are you doing and thinking what feels normal, what you're used to, what is habitual? When you study the human brain, we talk about the fact that 95% of what we do is habitual. And we learn most of that by the time we're 13. I talk about parents, peers, previous experiences that create our belief systems. Our belief systems create our actions, our actions create our habits, all these different types of things. And I believe that negativity becomes a habit. I don't think people are bad. No different than, you know, I think when addicts have, you know, situations where I don't believe any addict out there gets up in the morning and goes, I'm going to see how I can ruin my relationships today. I'm going to see how I can wreck my marriage or ruin my finances or whatever. That's not the plan. That's just the habit. And I think, you know, that when we start realizing where negativity comes from, it feels normal sometimes because we've been taught it. It because it comes actually from. When you look at how the human brain has evolved over time, there's a negativity bias that originally was kind of instilled in us to keep us safe. And I'll talk a little bit more about that here in a few minutes. But when you just think about languaging, there's more ways to describe emotions that are negative than there are words in the English language to describe emotions that are positive. And there's been multiple studies done where they take people and they go, okay, I want you to write all the words that you can think of for negative emotions and people write and write and write. And then you go, okay, cool. Now I want you to write all the words that you can think of that are positive. And then I want you to write all the words that are just kind of in between. And then they do others where they take a group of people and go, don't think about positive, negative or in between or neutral. Just write words that describe emotions. By and large, regardless of how you slice a study, the demographic, the psychographics, whatever it is, over half of the words that come back represent negative emotions. Around 30% or so represent positive emotions. And then about 20%, on average are kind of in between and just neutral. And so, by and large, it's easier to communicate about the negative. And then we think about, you know, where our focus is at. Last week, I was wrapping up episode 83, talking about the universal law that what you focus on expands. And I want you to think about criticism and compliment. Which one of those has more impact for you? If I tell you that you really suck at something and you should be ashamed of yourself for your behavior, or I tell you, damn, nice kicks. I like your sneakers today. Which one of those is going to carry more impact? Which one of those is going to get more of your attention? Right. We all know that we give more impact to criticism than we do compliment. I'm very blessed in my speaking, my coaching, my training, my writing career. I've won all kinds of different awards. I was the Tom McCart consultant of the Year in the H vac industry in 2014. I've won, won multiple accolades. I've Been written up in USA Today. There's all kinds of different areas that I've won and had. Super high, man. Feels great. All kinds of standing ovations. You know what's fascinating? I remember somewhere around 2004, 2005, as a young speaker and I was coming up and I was learning my craft and I got a review after a session one time I ran a three day boot camp or a four day boot camp and at the end of that I was reading through the evaluations and one of the evaluations, it was a point of a five point scale, I scored in the 4.9 something range for the overall event. But one of the comments said fire Kenny. And that wrecked me. And I scored. So I scored almost perfectly. But one individual, for whatever reason I wasn't able to reach, connect with whatever that was. And they said, man, you need to get rid of this crazy guy. And literally wrote on the review, on the eval, fire Kenny. And here we are, 17, 18 years later and I'm sharing that story with you after I've changed thousands of lives, if not tens of thousands of lives through my work, through my books, through my recordings, through my videos, through our companies, like whatever that is. Think about that though. I'm sharing that with you because it's big. It's not like I wake up and think about it all the time, right? But I just want you to realize, how about you? It's easier to feel negative than it is positive sometimes. And we have what's called in psychology the negativity bias. And we think about the negativity bias that comes from trauma, from insults, there's negative stimulation that happens. And when we really look at what motivates us, a lot of people, especially in driven minded individuals. How many of you on the line right now? On the line? I wish we were live where you could share back. I'm sure more of that will be coming. But in, in the meantime, share this. Give us a, like, give us a rating, give us a review. Shoot me an email. We'd love to hear from you. But you know, when I think about does this resonate for you? I'm going to show them that I can be successful. Guess what? Negative bias Motivation. When we think about how many of us get motivated from something negative. I know for me, I am blessed to have created economic independence because I was raised in a poor situation. I grew up wearing secondhand clothes. I was part of the us and them. I was the us who couldn't go on vacation. I didn't have a Decent car that I could count on to start all the time. That was very negative. That gave me negative bias where I said, I've got to get out of here. And that gave me motivation to create a different level of life for myself and those around me. Negativity bias. Where else does it show up? How about news? How about headlines? There's bad news. We gravitate toward negative news because it's got drama. It taps that part of our brain which keeps the negative feeling normal. Right? There's that in journalism. There's a saying that says if it bleeds, it leads. Right? If I'm looking at my stories and what am I? Oh, my gosh, there's a bloody mess here that's going to lead our 10 o', clock, whatever it is, right? It's going to be front page of the paper. Negative bias. How about politics? Don't get me started on politics. I'm just talking about how politics is marketed now, how campaigns are run. Campaigns are very seldom run now on what a particular individual or party can do for you. It's more run about negativity bias, about how much harm the other candidate or party is going to harm you. Negativity bias. Why is this such a big thing? There was a time back in our history when I needed this to stay alive. I needed to be afraid. I needed to be. You know, when we talk about the frontal lobe of the brain and the fight or flight or freeze part of the brain where, you know, if there's something going on and if I'm a deer in the wild and I'm not sure of what that noise is, I'm going to run from it. I'm going to keep. Anything negative is going to keep me safe because I'm going to run the other way. How I think about it, how I process it, here's the reality. We no longer need that, my friend. Maybe negative only feels normal because that's the conditioning I've given my brain. And now collective consciousness is embracing that society as a whole is perpetuating that marketing and advertising is playing to the fear rather than the gain. All these different things are coming in. So guess what? You've got to take control for yourself now. I'm not saying you go live in a hole in the woods or something and don't pay attention to what's going on in the world. Although you might find bliss if you tried it. I don't know. Make sure you have a good Internet connection so you can bring leadership in a nutshell with you there you Go. Right. I'm going to give you positive marketing for this podcast, but I hope you're having a good time and I hope you're realizing there's nothing wrong with you, my friend. Nothing at all. You're exactly right. You're exactly right where you're supposed to be doing exactly what is best for you at this moment in time. And that is taking a step back to think about your thinking, an opportunity for you to challenge yourself and go, Man, I woke up feeling like crap this morning, Kenny. I kind of just stumbled out of bed. I was a little annoyed. I had too many beers last night. I shouldn't ate the last slice of pizza, whatever it was. We're in the holiday season. My pants are fitting a little tight and I don't feel very good. That's okay. Honor it, write about it, journal it, get it off your chest, get it out of your head and then you don't have to keep perpetuating the negativity. What you put in your brain matters, who you hang around with matters. One of my mentors taught me. When it comes to people, when it comes to peer group, who are you surrounding yourself with? Are you surrounding yourself with people that remind you of your future? Or are you surrounding yourself with people that remind you of your past? When you step into your greatness, it makes people uncomfortable. That creates a negative situation. When you step into your greatness, it creates a change in chemical in the brain and that creates a negative situation when you break habits that are serving you negatively. If you drink, if you smoke, if you have bad self care routines. Bad's a judgment word, but you know what I'm saying. I'll speak for myself. I used to be a heavy drinker, a heavy smoker. I had these habits and when I quit, all the insanity of those behaviors. I had chemical reactions in my brain and I had a strong habitual connection in my brain. All it wanted was to feel normal. It didn't care whether I was smoking or going to the gym. What it cared about was the habituation of the pattern. And that's true with your mind. So there's nothing wrong with you. You've just conditioned yourself to accept negativity as normal. It doesn't have to be that way. It just feels that way now when I wake up and I feel great and I'm in a state of bliss. When I live my life in ease, joy and glory. And yes, I get challenged and yes, I go into the gap that I get frustrated, I have challenges, but I don't. There Any longer. I find my emotional regulation, I go, is this worth giving my negative energy to? There's not a single person, place, thing, or event that can take away your own peace, happiness, love. Not a single thing. But we give it away all the time to trivial things, to traffic jams, to, you know, different things. I was caught. I had to reroute my route. Last night, the lovely Christy and I were going home from a nice dinner and there was an accident on Scottsdale Road. And it literally had closed the road, so we had to take a different route. And people were all jammed up and honking at each other, literally. Somebody might have lost their life in an accident a quarter mile up the road. And you're pissed off because somebody's trying to get in front of you to get literally people. This is where we're at. Here's the deal. Don't judge other people. That's their own reality. I have massive compassion, massive empathy for people living and perpetuating so much pain that they get pissed off over trivial stuff like that. Does it really matter? I don't think so. But you're causing yourself stress that's unnecessary, and that begins to feel normal. And then the chemical in your brain starts to crave that, just like it does a shot of whiskey, a beer, a marijuana cigarette. Marijuana. How about a joint, Kenny? A marijuana cigarette. Jesus, I sound like I'm 80, right? A bong hit. How about that? Right? So whatever the case is, though, we don't realize that the brain gets conditioned to negative. And that, my friend, is why negative feels normal. Sometimes it's not normal, it just feels normal. Is it right or does it feel like it's normal because we're doing these things? It comes from awareness. It comes from awakening. Yes, I'm talking about that a lot on this podcast because that's where all change comes from. It's you taking your power back. So there's a few things I would encourage you to stop. Hit the timeout, hold up the stop sign, like the cross, guard, stop. To your mind, stop the negative news. Yes, I'm a fan of turning it off. Yeah, you can have your feed, you can have your. Pay attention. You can scan whatever it is, but when you sit down and watch an entire newscast, I would love for you to judge your emotional regulation before you watch the news and your emotional regulation after you watch the news and see if you're not more anxious, if you don't have a little more anxiety after watching all the horrible things and the terrible people that are in the world. Guess what? We live in an incredible time with incredible people with incredible things going on. But that doesn't sell the news because it's part of that negative negativity bias. Stop news. Stop negative self talk. Stop beating yourself up. You spend more time with you than anybody on the planet and you are brutal to yourself. Stop treating yourself like a terrible human being. You're an incredible gift from God to the world. How about you live that way? How about you honor your truth? How about you stop the negative routines that you have and just challenge just once in a while. Maybe you get up and go for a walk instead of having that last beer when you're looking for whatever it is, whatever that is. How you talk to your children, how you talk to your spouse. What if you start building some new rituals? What if you stop focusing on the negative so much and start maximizing what's positive? Last week I talked about the four by four journal exercise of jotting down four things that are going well, four things that are positive in your life, and then follow up with four things that are a little frustrating, a little pissed off, maybe flat out mad as hell about maybe you get home from last night after dinner a positive. Oh, maybe if I was in a different place, in a different time, if my previous thinking conditioning, I would have said, man, I had a great dinner with Christy last night. That damn accident that happened in front of me, I can't believe we got rerouted. It cost me an extra 15 minutes before I got home. Hey, it is what it is. It's how I might have felt back in the day. I certainly would have felt that at one time in my life. Write it down, get it out, get it off your chest, off your heart, out of your brain and create the space for something to start feeling normal. That's not negative. Negative only feels normal because that's the conditioning you've given it. Nothing wrong with you, nothing wrong with the world. It's just where you are right now. Elevate your consciousness, elevate your happiness. This is episode 84, why Negative Feels normal. I'm your host, Kenny Chapman. Take some massive action. Share this episode with some friends, with some family, with some team members. Would love to help you share the wealth as we create this positive movement and helping us cope with this crazy driven mind that we've been gifted with. Until we talk, my friends, make it a better than fantastic week. I'll see you real soon. Cheers.