Get Rid of Negative Thoughts

Hello and welcome to the Soul of Innovation podcast. I am the host, Thomas Anglero, and my mission for this podcast is to share with you those private thoughts and reflections that I have being one of the top keynote speakers around the world on technology, motivation, and innovation. I hope you truly enjoy all the lessons I share, all the dots I connect that sometimes are just really difficult to get out but it's all for you. I truly hope you enjoy this episode.

Welcome to the Soul of Innovation podcast. I am Thomas Anglero, and I want to ask you a question.

What type of world have you made for yourself?

What type of world— when you look at somebody, what do you think they're thinking about you? When you're sitting at your desk at your office, what are you thinking about, and what—

how do you feel?

You know, we create our own world by what we're thinking all the time. We come up with all sorts of crazy stuff, thinking all sorts of things, and we control our feelings at that moment, our emotions at that moment, and we come to some crazy conclusions. And let me give them— tell you a story now, which is what's just happened, and let's see if you see yourself, and let's just fix that, right? So as you're listening to this, this is the holiday seasons for me. And what I wanted to do this week— this is the week, last week of Christmas— so I said, these last 3 days leading up to Christmas, I want to give a gift to every single employee in my company. So on the first day, I bought hundreds, hundreds of gingerbread men. And me and a colleague on the first day was one of the women in my office. We both had on the Santa Claus hats or the elves hats, I don't know what, the red ones with the white puffy thing at the end, whatever you call that hat. And we had on some Christmas music. So as I walked around with this huge bowl with hundreds of gingerbread cookies on the first day, my colleague, she walked around with the big Bluetooth speaker blasting Christmas music, and she danced behind me as I ran, or as I walked and jogged, or whatever you want to call it, to each person in the company, to their individual cubicle. I went to every single one of them, or we went to every single one of them, and I would say, Merry Christmas, Merry Merry Christmas, or in Norwegian, and we went to every single person at their desk so that they didn't have to get up. We didn't want to disturb them in their workday, which we did anyway. And you should have seen the smiles. Such a simple gesture, people lit up.

On the very first day, people were shocked and like, what are you guys doing? What are we doing?

I was like, Merry Christmas, have a cookie. And everybody would hesitate, and then the first day hesitating, and then they would take a cookie. And then of course there's some men who are like, I must take 3 cookies. Okay, whatever, right? And but the beauty of the thing was to see so many people smile, and that was the whole point of it. It is what— what's the cost? There's no cost really to giving out hundreds of gingerbread cookies to hundreds of people at their desk to bring a smile to them. And whether they were young or old, they all lit up like a light bulb. And the most beautiful thing was the older people. They had on these cranky faces, these unhappy faces, sitting at their desk. And in that first moment, I came over and I said, Merry Christmas, Kuyul! They looked so pissed, like, why the hell are you disturbing me? And then they saw, they heard the music. Which they didn't hear up until we were in their face. And then they saw me smiling. They saw this huge plate with hundreds of cookies.

And I said, take one, take two, Merry Christmas. And they would remember that feeling of when they were a kid. They remember that feeling when somebody when their grandmother or their grandfather said, "Have a cookie." Isn't that beautiful? And they would smile and they would get all happy.

Their tone would change, their eyes would change, the color of their skin would change, and they would light up and they would stand up from their chair and they would go, "Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you." And as we jogged or ran to the next person and going down the halls and going to every single person, remember we went to everybody, they didn't have to come to us. They would stand there, a few of them, and watch us go away.

And so beautiful, Merry Christmas, yelling Merry Christmas.

And that was the first day.

The second day, I bought tangerines, little oranges, and I went around to every single person again, same time of the day. This time people said, you're doing it again? Of course, it's Christmas. And they loved it. And they grabbed tangerines, and they just smiled and smiled. Oh, Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! But again, as I approached them, they were in their own world. But when they saw the person bringing them a Christmas gift, they lit up. They became young again. They had energy again. All of a sudden, everybody in that area started talking to each other, laughing. Even one group started telling Christmas stories, when a moment before we came, me and my Christmas elf, with the beautiful Christmas music, they were sitting at their desks, "Mmm," in their own world. And then on the third day, we brought these giant cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and we did it again. And again, people were in their own world. But this time, a few people were expecting us, waiting for us, just like you do when you were a little kid and you knew it was Christmas morning. You waited till somebody said, okay, go, go get your Christmas gifts. Or you knew somebody was going to bring you a toy, or you knew it was your birthday. And that anticipation— you should have seen all these people, how excited they were, how they were sitting at their cubicles looking at the clock going, it's 2 o'clock, is he coming, is he coming? Here he comes, here he comes, here he comes. What world do you live in? What world have you created for yourself that you've forgotten the excitement, the beauty, the feeling of love? You had it, and you have it now, but you're stuck in that world. We create a world for ourselves. We sit there at our cubicle, or we sit there wherever we are, or we're on a train or on the bus, or we're sitting in our car, and we think these thoughts, and we create a world of so much negativity, of so much doubt. It's not there. It's not there. It's not real. None of that is real. What is real is the weird guy with the stupid hat, the nice colleague with the great Christmas music, giving out gingerbread cookies, tangerines, and chocolate chip cookies every day, is doing that because he loves you. That's the reality. That's what actually happened in reality. But in your head, you were someplace else. In your head, you were thinking some other thing that wasn't really good for you, something negative, something—

or what did he do, what did she do?

But in reality, you were getting love. What reality do you live in? What world are you building up inside your head? We have to get outside of our heads. We have to stop making up these false realities that don't exist, because if you stay there, you would have missed free love during this Christmas holidays. And if you're hearing this and it's not Christmas holidays, you would have missed free love on any day of the week, at any time of the week. The person passing by you on the bus who they would have bumped into you, and because you're in such a grouchy mood, you don't even turn to look at them.

Like, of course people bump into me.

But in actuality, the person bumped into you and they wanted to look in your eye and go, I am so sorry, but you missed it because you were so damn grumpy.

You're like, oh, rude people.

See the false world you created? When if you would have turned and looked at a person, you looked in the eyes and you just saw pure empathy, pure love, and they would have said to you, I'm so sorry, are you okay? My God, what a wonderful moment. What a wonderful gift they would have gave you. But instead, you created this false reality because you said, I'm not gonna even turn to see this person. We think things— what are these people thinking about me? What are these people saying about me? Why are these people doing these things? All that is not real. It's not real. What kind of world are— have you created for you in your head? It's not real. The real world— and I'm being serious about this— is full of people giving out gingerbread cookies, tangerines, and chocolate chip cookies just for you, where you're sitting, where you're working. You don't have to do anything. It's going to come to you. I want all of us to reflect about this. What world are we creating right now inside our head. It's not a real world. You want to change the world? Give somebody something. Give them a smile. Like we did. Me and my colleague, we were around smiling and we lit people up and they wanted to be lit up with happiness and joy and love. You know, older people are just kids with wrinkles. That's all that we are. The older you get, you're still the same kid with the— still the same insecurities, who still loves the things that you love and still passionate about the things you're passionate— who still daydream about the things you've always daydreamed. You're just older with skin that's wrinkling because gravity is taking its effect and the enzymes in the body and the proteins aren't building much as much and the amino acids aren't doing what they're supposed to do, the hormone imbalance, whatever. I'm boring, I'm sorry. But the skin doesn't reflect the heart or the mind. Give love and you will get magnitudes more. I thought it was beautiful to do such a small little thing for so many hundreds of people every single day. Because I realized it's such a big thing to do for most of them, for all of them. For me, it was— it cost me nothing to make several hundred people happy, 300 people happy, 3 days in a row. And as I said before, on the 3rd day, when I rounded the corner towards their cubicle to see them like an expected little puppy waiting for the master to come home, and to see hundreds of people with that face It was fantastic, absolutely fantastic. I want you to go forth, spread beauty and light, and accept all the love that people have to give you. Get outside of your head. Whenever you find yourself in your head, just blink a couple of times, take a deep breath in, smell the air you're in. That's real. Look around. That's real. And smile to somebody and watch them smile back. That's real too. You're not going to be interpreted as someone crazy. You're going to be interpreted as someone that people are looking and say, I want to be that person. Look how happy he looks. Look how happy she looks. God, go forth and spread beauty and light. I love you. Until the next time.

Thank you for listening to that episode. If you want to contact me, you can contact me on my website at anglero.com, and you can also subscribe to the newsletter, or you can find me anywhere on social media with Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. Thank you so much, and I hope to hear from you very soon.