Why Positive Thinking Isn’t Working For You

Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you love this podcast, you'll probably love my new book that just came out last month. It is on the psychology of taking action. With over 73 scientific and psychological studies to prove how to take action based on scientific fact. It is called Level up. How to get focused, stop procrastinating, and upgrade your life. It is available wherever books are sold, and once again, it is called Level Up. Today we're gonna be talking about why positive thinking hasn't really been working for you. I'm gonna talk about why positive thinking doesn't work for a lot of people. And then what I'm gonna do is talk about how to actually make it work for you. It's funny because I hear a lot of people talk about positive thinking and they talk trash about positive thinking and they say, oh, that's just toxic positivity. And you're just saying, when you're saying be positive, you're saying, you know, just ignore the negative and don't think of any of the bad things in your life. Think of only the good things. I'm not saying that at all. What I'm saying is with positive thinking and negative thinking, it's not just like a once a day kind of thing. It should be the overall state of who you are. Are you more of a pessimistic person or even more of an optimistic person? And I'm not saying at all, ignore the negative. Pretend it doesn't exist. What I'm saying is if you have a positive attitude, you. You can then take action to create whatever it is that you need to from the negativity that might be existing in your life. Thinking positive actually helps you create a better life. And that's scientifically proven. And so before we go any further, for those of you guys that are a little bit skeptical, I guess you would say, let's actually bring some scientific studies in here and psychological studies to prove that this is not just a bunch of bullshit. So there was a study by Martin Seligman, and that was back in 2000, it was called Positive Psychology an introduction. And it proved that positive emotions and positive thinking contribute to an individual's well being and their actual monetary success. His research in the early 2000s demonstrated that optimistic people tend to be healthier, more successful, and live longer than their pessimistic counterparts. So think about that for a second. A study was done in the 2000s and just so you know, it was just one study. He's considered like the father of positive psychology. He started really researching and going into the early 2000s. But he found through all of his research that optimistic people tend to live longer, be healthier, be more successful, and they live longer than their, like I said, than their pessimistic counterparts. So that's the benefit of thinking positive. Okay, cool. So there is some proof in that. That's a good thing to know. What about thinking negative? Let's talk about that. Because for me, I know that for a very long time before I got into self development and reading and trying to improve myself, I was pessimistic as hell. I made excuses about everything. I always looked at the negative side of things. I used to just be that way. What would have happened if I would have stayed there and I would have stayed that way? Well, let's dive into it. Aaron Beck and just if you don't know. Aaron Beck is one of the founding doctors in cognitive behavioral therapy. He discovered that negative thinking patterns, this is back in the 70s and 80s, that negative thinking patterns, which he called cognitive distortions. But just remember, negative thinking patterns are the central to the development and the maintenance of depression. And so if you want to be depressed, negative thinking patterns are central to the development of it and the keeping of depression. He had a ton of different studies and writings that provide a substantial data that shows how patterns like all or nothing thinking, over overgeneralization and catastrophizing contribute to depression like symptoms. So the negative thinking of all or nothing thinking, the overgeneralization of negative thinking and the catastrophizing, which means like thinking that everything is just going to be terrible, contribute to depressive symptoms. Hmm, interesting. Rob, are there any more studies? There's a ton. Let me give you one more. A study that was done in 2000 at the Mayo Clinic found that pessimism was associated with higher risk of mortality. This study found that pessimists, people who think negative, had a 19% higher risk of dying over a 30 year period compared to optimists. So the research shows that there's a link between your negative thinking and worse overall health outcomes. Interesting. Isn't that crazy? If you go back a few episodes ago, I actually, when I talk about the placebo effect, I actually give some research that shows when you think you are sick, you will become more sick. So positive thinking seems to be the way we want to go. Negative thinking Tends to create a worse life. So negative thinking creates a worse life. Positive thinking creates a better life. So why the hell do you say that negative thinking doesn't work, Rob? Well, let me tell you why. I'm going to tell you the way that most people try to do positive thinking, and then they're like, this doesn't work for me. This isn't working. This is bs. I'm going to do something different. I created a video about four years ago now. It went crazy viral on Facebook, and It did like 15 million views. And the way that I described positive thinking, really through this visual, made a lot of sense for people. And so I had this big bowl, this big glass bowl. It was like a fish bowl, right? And you know, it's a couple gallons and it was see through, and I had water that was inside of it. And what I said was, imagine that you have this big bowl of water, and then I literally had a scooper that had a bunch of dirt in it. And every negative thought is just a scoop of dirt that you put into that water. A scoop of dirt that you put in that water. A scoop of dirt that you put in that water. And so many people talk so negative to themself. And we live in such a world that can tend to be so negative. And we're surrounded by other negative people as well. And so we think, oh, I have to fit in with other people. I'm dumb, I'm ugly, I'm fat. I'm not acceptable. I'm not what society wants. I'm not what my parents want. I'm not good enough. I have failed relationship. I don't look as good as those Instagram models. All of these advertisements are telling me that I'm not good enough. Everything around me is negative. This person's negative. They talk negative to me. It's impossible to go through life without getting scars and without being beaten down. And so every single one of those thoughts is just another scoop of dirt in that clean water. Another scoop of dirt in that clean water. Another scoop, another scoop, another scoop, another scoop, another scoop. And people are just constantly scooping that dirt and putting it into the water. What would that water look like after one day, it would be completely muddy and dirty. And then so what do people do? They say, okay, I'm going to start thinking positive. So what did I do? I had a bunch of cups of water. And if you take one cup of water and you put it into that big dirty bowl because of all the negative thoughts have been put in there and you Put in one cup of water. What happens? Does it clean the entire bowl? No, it doesn't clean the entire bowl. It just makes it a little bit. The water level raised just a little bit, but it's still almost just as dirty looking. And people go, well, positive thinking doesn't work because I tried it. You know, I told myself, good job today. And I'm like, well, that was one thought that came into your head. What were the other 99% of thoughts? Oh, that's right. They were negative, weren't they? So if you're putting more negative into the bowl, more dirt into the bowl, how could the bowl ever be clean? It won't be. And then people say, well, positive thinking doesn't work. No, no, no, positive thinking works. It's just that you're thinking positive 1% of the time and 99% of the time you're thinking negative. And so the way that I actually showed this is I took a hose and I turned the hose on and I put it in the bowl. And what's cool is once it starts going in the bowl, it starts spinning out. All of the water, all of the old water, all the old dirt starts spinning and coming out of the water. And if you leave it there for about two minutes, that that really dirty bowl of water now becomes crystal clear. What is that hose? That hose is a constant flow of positive thoughts coming into your head. And so if we want to be more positive, it's not a sometimes thing, it's not a half the day kind of thing. It is a every fucking moment that we can kind of thing. Now will we slip into some negative and accidentally throw some dirt in there? Yes. So what do we need to do? We need to bring more positive in. And once again, this is not positive. Toxic positivity and saying like, oh, everything's great when your life is crumbling. But it's saying, hey, no matter what happens, I'm going to find some good to come out of this. I'm going to figure out a way to make some positivity out of this thing that might be negative. You have to learn to be your biggest fan. You have to stop talking so much trash to yourself. So much trash around about the people that are around you. You can't think that you're just going to. And I always use the example, I think it was as a man thinketh the book where he says, you imagine your mind being a garden. Imagine. And you're the only one that can tend to this garden. You can't go and plant strawberry seeds into your garden and just expect that tomatoes are gonna grow, right? Like, wouldn't that be crazy if I gave you strawberry seeds? I put em in the ground or you put em in the ground and then you look at me and you're like, I'm so mad. Strawberries are growing. I thought tomatoes were gonna grow. Wouldn't that be kind of crazy? It would. Well, it's kind of same thing. You can't plant negative seeds in your mind all day long and look around and be like, well, I don't know why I'm not positive. I don't know why I don't have a positive life. Because you reap what you sow. Whatever you plant in the ground, you're going to get. Whatever you plant in your mind you're going to get. So you can't be negative to yourself all the time and think, well, like, why does my life suck? You have to learn to be your biggest fan. You have to learn to be your biggest supporter. You have to learn to speak positively about yourself, about other people around you. Stop judging people. You have to demand happiness in your life. You have to demand greatness in everything that you do. So when you first hear about positive thinking, you have to think like, well, yeah, maybe I am. I do have a bowl of really, really dirty water. And then you try positive thinking for a week, or you try positive thinking for a couple days and you think, oh my God, it doesn't work. No, you have to take a step back and be like, oh my God, this water is so dirty. I need to flood this entire bowl with positive thinking and eventually get as much dirt out as I possibly can. If you're having more negative thoughts than positive thoughts on a daily basis, you're scooping more dirt into the water. Your water will always be dirty. Positive thinking can't be something that you just decide to try. It's not a try kind of thing. It's got to be a lifestyle. It's the same reason why diets don't tend to work. Because it's not a diet that you need, it's a lifestyle change that you need. So if you're trying to lose weight, you could lose £20 and then go back to your old lifestyle. And then what happens? You gain it all back. Same thing's got to happen if you want your body to be different. It's not a diet, it's not a 60 days kind of thing. It is a lifestyle change. It is a fundamental change in who you are and what you do. It is the Exact same for the way that you think. It has to be a fundamental change in who you are and what you do. You have to turn the hose on and leave it on all day long, and eventually all the water turns into crystal clear and it gets that dirt out. But you have to be super intentional about it. You have to notice when a negative thought comes up. When you notice a negative thought come up, what do you do? You might say replace it with one positive thought. No, no, no. Because we're trying to get the dirt out. We're not trying to go one for one. So when you notice a negative thought come up, you replace that negative thought with three positive thoughts. You have to beat the negativity out of your head. You have to beat the positivity into your head sometimes and start noticing your feelings shifting. So a lot of times we don't always notice our thoughts. A lot of times what we notice first is our feelings shift, and they start to shift to a bad feeling where it's, you know, anxious or closed off or anger. A feeling that we don't want to feel. You have to take a step back, and you have to. In cognitive behavioral therapy, they ask you this question. When you notice your feelings shift. Ask yourself the question, what was I just thinking? What was I just thinking? Because a lot of times we have what they call automatic thoughts. Automatic thoughts kind of seep in, and we don't even notice them because we're only consciously thinking. 5% of our thoughts. 95% of our thinking is actually subconscious. So a lot of times these automatic thoughts of negativity will just kind of sneak in, so we don't notice the thought. But what we do notice is that we notice the way that we feel changes, and it might shift towards a negative state that we don't want to feel, start feeling bad. And so what do we do at that point in time? We ask ourselves, what was I just thinking? We start thinking about what it is. Oh, I think I can identify why I'm thinking this way. And then what we want to do is we want to test the validity of those thoughts. Those thoughts that you were just thinking that made you feel bad. Are they true? And a lot of times we're like, yeah, they are true. And then I say, okay, is it written into the fabric of the universe? Well, no, it's not. Okay, then it's not true. Because only truth is written into the fabric of the universe. If your thoughts and your beliefs are not true, they're not written to the fabric of the universe. So it's not that it's truth. It's just a belief that you have. And just FYI, because you believe something and have believed it for a really long time doesn't make it true. It doesn't. It just means it's a thought pattern that you're continuing to hold on to that you have had for years and years and years and years. A belief is not absolute truth. It's very important for you to know this. It's super important to know this. Just because you believe it doesn't make it true. And just because you've been believing it for a very long time doesn't make it any more true. And so you have to start noticing in yourself, what is it that made you feel bad? Okay, where can I identify the thinking? What was I just thinking? Was there a negative thought pattern that might have popped back up? And then think about it this way. Imagine that you did have this garden. And I said, hey, this is your garden. You're the only one that can tend to this garden. Nobody else in the world can tend to this garden. That's kind of what your mind is like. So if you walk up to that garden and you see that weeds are starting to grow in the garden, you can't expect someone to come and take those weeds out for you, because you're the only one that can tend to this garden. You're the only one that knows about this garden. So what do you have to do? You have to go and start pulling weeds for yourself. So when you notice the weeds, the negative thought patterns in your mind starting to pop up. What do you need to do? You need to figure out some sort of way to start pulling them. You need to pull them, and you need to put in place of them three positive seeds. If you start talking trash about yourself, you notice yourself not feeling good, and you're like, what? Okay, I don't feel good. Why do I not feel good? Oh, I don't feel good because I'm noticing I was, you know, just looking at myself in the mirror, and I must have just been judging myself and judging that I got a little. Little bit of fat hanging over my. My belt buckle. Oh, okay. I was judging myself. I was talking shit to myself subconsciously. Okay, what do I need to do? I need to look myself in the mirror, and I need to tell I need to pull those weeds. And what I need to do is I need to plant three positive seeds. I need to look myself in the mirror, and I need to tell myself three things that I love about Myself. Okay, here's the three things I got to say. I love this. I love this. I love this. And start creating an environment where you actually tend to think positive more than you think negative. And as you start to do this, become better at it. You might not be really good at it right now. That's okay. But you start becoming a little bit better and a little bit better and a little bit better. Like I said, when I first started trying to get positive thinking, I was so damn pessimistic, I could make excuses for everything. I was always so negative. I was always doom and gloom. Now, for me, you know, now that's. What is that 18 years later. Obviously, it's a long time. Basically, half my life I've been thinking I was thinking negative. Half my life I've been thinking positive. But now it's hard for me to think negative because I've just programmed myself to be different. So it's not always easy. It doesn't happen immediately. It does take time. It takes attention, but it takes you paying attention to how you think and how you feel as often as possible. And start knowing that positive thinking does work for you. You just have to have it be something that is a lifestyle, not just something that's like a diet that you're going to try out for a couple weeks. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories and tag me in it. Robdial Jr R O B D I A L J R. And if you love this podcast also, you probably love listening to us a little bit more. If you didn't hear we're going from three times a week to four times a week, and so it's going to be every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Make sure you tune in four times a week for a new episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. And with that, I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.