The Power of Negative Thinking

Ho ho ho, witches! Official podcast merch is finally here. Oh my God, I'm so excited that I can finally share these with you. You guys, I've been keeping this under wraps for over 6 months, and I honestly don't know how because I'm not a very good secret keeper. But our manifestation hoodies are now live and they are ready to shop just in time for holiday gifting, cozy winter days running errands, or breezy nights on the beach if you live in warmer weather like me. I'm kind of freaking out a little bit because even when you've done it a thousand times, stepping outside of your comfort zone and trying something new is still scary. So I've been having all of those typical thoughts that we go through. Is this gonna work? Will anyone care? Are they gonna love it as much as I do? What if nobody buys? All of the things, right? But in order for me to be an embodiment of what I teach, I've just gotta say fuck it and go full steam ahead anyways. So the hoodies are here. We've never done merch before, but I am so, so excited to bring something to our podcast community that we can all just like be matching and have fun with and wear together. And I can see you guys in it and we can take pictures and it's just going to be like so cute. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about the hoodies in case you're interested and you want to grab one. Yes, they are cozy and they are really soft on the inside, so it'll give you that like cozy soft feel on your skin. On the front like little corner, there's a small Makeshift Happen logo, and then on the back in big like retro sort of bubble font, it says Co-Creating with the Universe. And there's two colors that you can choose from. There's either a black hoodie with white lettering, or there's a white hoodie with pink lettering. Now for sizing, I really like an oversized hoodie. So for truly, truly oversized, I would recommend that you size up from your normal size at least like two sizes. So for reference, I'm 5'3" and I normally wear a small or an extra small in most tops, but I wear a large and sometimes an extra large in these hoodies because I I like to be drowning in it. But if you want a more true-to-size fit, don't worry, you can just order your normal size and it will fit you like a traditional hoodie. So Jaime was also part of the campaign and the photo shoot that we did to promote the merch, which you guys can see over on Instagram if you head over to my page today. There will be— I'll be posting more photos and videos. And he's 6'1" and he wears an extra large, which for him is like a comfortable but slightly baggy but basically true to size fit for him. I'll leave a link in the show notes for you guys if you want to go check them out. And you can also head over to my Instagram to see more photos, and the link to shop will be in my bio on Instagram as well, at _samanthadaily. If you want to be matching with me or your spiritual besties this holiday season, treat yourself to this cozy manifestation hoodie. You guys are going to feel so cute while you're out running your errands, wearing some biker shorts and your oversized hoodie, or hanging out with friends, lounging at home, or just on your hot girl walks around the neighborhood. But if you want to get them before the holidays, I do suggest that you order as soon as possible because each hoodie is going to be individually printed, packaged, and shipped as it's ordered. So this whole process from start to finish will usually mean that it'll arrive at your house in 5 to 7 business days, but it could take up to 2 weeks depending on the demand that we have and where it's being delivered to. Yes, there will be worldwide shipping, so for all of my besties in other countries, you can still grab one, which I'm so excited about. That was actually really important to me to make sure that we did worldwide shipping. So if you do decide to rock one of these hoodies with me, please, please, please take a picture of you wearing it or when it comes in the mail and tag me on Instagram at _samanthadaily or send me a DM so that I can personally thank you for your support. Seriously, you guys, it means the world to me. I can't wait to see you in these hoodies. What's up guys, welcome back to the podcast. I'm so excited that you decided to tune in and listen to this week's episode. Thank you for being here. I love ya and I really mean it. I'm being serious. I just had a look today actually at some of our rankings for the podcast, like our top rankings, um, in different countries around the world, obviously in the category of self-improvement because that's the category of this podcast. And I took a look at our peak positions, so like our top positions that we've ever made it into the charts. And you guys, number 8 in all of the United States of America for all podcasts in self-improvement. Oh, like, honestly, what is life? And then number 7 in all podcasts in Australia in the category of self-improvement. Really incredible. So top 10 in both the US and Australia. And then what else do we have? I took a look at Great Britain and we hit position 24 in the category of self-improvement over in Great Britain. So that's exciting. All my babies in the UK listening, I love you guys. And then I took a look at Canada. And we were at position number 24 in self-improvement in Canada. So for all my Canadian listeners, I love you guys, you're real ones. Um, yeah, this is just so incredible. These are the peak positions, so it doesn't mean that we're always consistently ranked at that place. It's just the highest, um, place that we've ever been ranked in those countries, but still so incredible. Like top 10 in US and Australia and top 25 in, uh, the UK and in Canada. Like, pretty freaking insane. So I love you guys, I appreciate you, thank you for tuning in. I'm excited to dive into today's episode. It's called The Power of Negative Thinking, which might sound really weird, but we're going to get into it. And this is actually inspired by an essay that I was reading by Brianna Weiss. So I'm going to kind of dig into this idea of the power of negative thinking. Let's get into the episode. Welcome to the Makeshift Happen podcast. I'm your host, Samantha Daly, entrepreneur, life coach, and your no BS bestie here to bring you all things mindset, manifestation, and personal development. This podcast is designed to help you expand your mind and uplevel your life. So turn the volume up and roll the windows down if you're coming along for the ride. Let's go make shift happen. I'm gonna start by reading you the first paragraph of this essay so that you have some context to what we're talking about when it comes to the power of negative thinking. Okay. So the essay starts out like this. It says, if you want to be emotionally free, there is only one thing you need to understand. Whatever problem you think you have right now is not the actual problem. The problem is that you do not know how to think about your problem correctly. So this kind of starts us off. We can tell that this essay is going to be a total mindfuck, like mental conundrum sort of thing. And I love this. I love the last line about the problem not being the actual problem. The problem is the way that you're thinking about the problem. And so when we get deeper into this essay, we start to kind of unpack the benefits of having quote unquote problems, which are the things that tend to spur negative thinking, fearful thoughts, doubtful thoughts. Old stories, whatever it is, right? What are the benefits of those things? And maybe that's a question that you want to write down for yourself because it could be really powerful to ask yourself that question. What is the benefit of my negative thoughts? Or if you have a specific situation that's coming up for you in your life right now, something that's frustrating to you, or it's, it's proving to be quite challenging or hard or mentally, emotionally, spiritually taxing, or things are not going the right way or they're not happening how you wanted it to, or it's not going fast enough, or someone in your life is creating resistance for you. Something's not working out. There's a relationship that's breaking down. Whatever it is, take a look at that and try to zoom out and create this different sort of perspective by asking yourself, or thinking rather, like, what if this problem wasn't actually the true problem? What if the problem was how I was thinking? About this problem. And so the question we ask ourselves is, what is the benefit to this situation? And by benefit, I don't mean that everything is perfect and it's great. Obviously, there's always painful things, hurtful things, frustrating things, sad things that happen for us in life. But when you're on this path of personal development and maybe you've had a spiritual awakening of some kind, you are being invited to deeper levels of self-awareness. And so what that means is always kind of looking for the lessons. And when we adopt this belief that I've talked about a lot, and I'm sure that you've heard before, that life is happening for you and not to you, these are the most important moments to remember that, right? It's very easy to sit in the trust or the knowing or the feeling that life is happening for you when everything's going well. Right? Anybody can do that. You're like, oh my gosh, it's working out. I'm getting what I wanted. I'm in love, or I'm happy, or I just got this new promotion, or I just got this new house, or things are going— I have great friendships in my life. Like, it's easy to believe that life is happening for you when things are positive, happy, and going smoothly. It's more challenging and also more important to believe that life is happening for you when things are hard. So whatever the problem is that may be presenting itself to you in your life right now, the problem, challenge, frustration, sadness, whatever it is, that's where we get to go deeper and really lean on all of the self-awareness that we've built throughout our journey to go, okay, I understand that this is hard. I understand that this is challenging. I understand that this is frustrating. I understand that I'm so sad right now, that I'm heartbroken, that I'm I'm grieving or that I'm pissed or whatever it is. And also, what is this teaching me? What can— what do I stand to gain from moving through this experience? Right. And so this essay talks about how the point of experiencing anything is actually to learn how to think about it differently. When you do not do the work of learning to think differently, that is when you become stuck, right? So if we just move through life and we face these challenges or hardships or setbacks and we're not actually doing the work to learn how to think differently about those things or how to pull out the lessons or how to reframe them, that's when we end up feeling stuck. That's when we end up feeling like totally just underwater, drowning in the gutter. Nothing's working out for me. How could this happen? This always me, why me, all of that stuff, right? Because we've trained ourselves to think a certain way about problems or hard circumstances. We've become addicted to creating these meanings about those hard experiences or setbacks. And maybe the meaning is, I knew it, it wasn't going to happen for me. It always works out like this. I'm so unlucky. I'm— why am I unworthy of these things? No one loves me, etc., etc. We become addicted to creating these certain types of meanings. And if we cannot learn how to think differently about those challenging circumstances, that is when we feel stuck. And even if you've been doing this type of mindset work for a while now in your life, It's not to say that there's, there's not going to be a time where you're presented with a challenge so big or so emotional or so frustrating or so taxing that it could throw you back into this sort of place of stuckness again, because of course it can. This isn't like doing the mindset work and learning how to pull out the lessons and understand that life is happening for you. Is not like a one-and-done sort of thing, right? You don't just like learn that and then you're like, awesome, I'm going to believe that forever. And no challenge or setback is ever going to fluster me again. I'm never going to find myself in a place of stuckness. No, of course, of course. Every new level in life has a new devil, and it's going to have new levels of challenges that require you to again apply the same concepts and the same work that you've been doing all along, but more in newer ways, in bigger ways, in different ways, just more, right? And so we always have the ability to find ourselves in a place of stuckness, and that's okay. But what this essay is kind of teaching us is that the more we experience, the more capable we are of seeing the world through varied lenses and thinking with more dimension and considering possibilities that were previously inconceivable to us. So the more that we experience, whether it's good or bad, the more capable we are of varying our ways in which we can choose to see things and the meanings that we're able to create out of these experiences and how much dimension and possibility that we can see. In the world. So there's a great quote inside this essay that says, "Learning how to better ignore negative thoughts is not learning how to think, it's learning how to disassociate." Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. I have a star next to that. Learning how to better ignore negative thoughts is not learning how to think, it's learning how to disassociate. And I guess if I were to put this in my own terms, I would probably say Learning how to better ignore negative thoughts is not mindfulness. It's not mindset work. It's not positive thinking. It's learning how to disassociate. Right. And so this is so— this piece is so, so important to remember as well, that if you are— if you've gotten really good at ignoring negative thoughts that come up, you may just be really talented at suppressing things. And that is very different from what we're speaking about when it comes to pulling out the lessons and asking how this could be serving you and what strength it's giving you, knowing that you're going to get through it and what context and dimension is it providing to your life and how is the struggle then going to make you stronger. That all of that that we're speaking about is very, very different from just push it down, don't feel it, don't think it, block it out. Two very, very different things. And, you know, there's a lot of conversation in the space about like toxic positivity. And I think because manifestation really popped off in the past couple of years and there's so many people speaking about it, there's endless podcasts about it, there's every celebrity is speaking about the law of attraction and how they created their life and their fame and their wealth and through the art of manifestation and, you know, everyone's kind of saying manifest it and everyone's talking about vibes and trusting your intuition and it's just kind of become very popularized. With that has come this false understanding that what we need to do in order to manifest is to just always be positive. And while it's true that we want to take really great care of our energy and try as we might to be in the best state possible most of the time, that is very different from just pushing everything down and not allowing yourself to feel negative feelings. And I want you to like— I know this is sort of like— I think it's hopefully this is like basic stuff and that we know this and we're not doing this, but also we're— I think we're all kind of doing it, myself included. Like, there are always times where we're like, nope, just be positive. Do you know what I mean? And we're like, oh, that's a problem. Can't think about it right now because I need to stay in a good energy so that I can manifest this thing. I'm working towards a promotion, or I want to get my dream house, or whatever it is. And you're like, got to stay in the good energy. Like, we are kind of doing the toxic positivity in some way, shape, or form. In our life, it's highly likely that you're guilty of it a little bit too. So this could be a good moment to kind of sit in reflection and think about where do I avoid feeling the negative feelings? Where do I avoid thinking or entertaining the negative thoughts? Because I'm worried that it will ruin my vibe. I'm worried that it will ruin what I'm manifesting because we don't do this for everything. But there will be certain things that you do do it for, and those things will provide you with so much information if you can identify them. Because it's very interesting to look at, hmm, these are the two situations in my life where I push it down or I try not to feel it or I try not to think it and I just band-aid it and move the fuck on because I don't want it to mess with me. If you know what those things are, that could be a gateway to such a deeper understanding of maybe things that you really fear the most, things that are the scariest to you that you don't want to feel. So exactly like this essay is saying, it's like the, the negative thoughts have so much information and insight to give us if we actually just sit down with them and take a look at, first of all, what they're telling us, the meanings that we're creating around them, the ones that we choose to entertain versus the ones that we just push down, suppress, and ignore. And what we do with that information next. If you can look at all of that when it comes to your fearful thoughts, doubtful thoughts, negative thoughts, you will have so much insight, right? And that's exactly what this whole thing is about. The power of negative thinking. It's what can negative thinking give you? How can it serve you to actually learn more about yourself? Learn more about your patterns, learn more about your fears, and also learn more about your life or what the next steps are for you moving forward. Now that you've moved through these experiences, our negative thoughts inform us as much as the positive ones do, right? So we can get just as much information and insight from our negative thoughts as we can from our positive ones. And so instead of us being fearful of these negative thoughts or not wanting them to come through, we can actually learn to see these as kind of trail markers or directions of some sort. And if you can't see them as directions to where you're ultimately going, because once you move through the negativity, you're going to come out the other side and you're going to be in a very important place that was designed for you, right? The hurdles, the challenges, the obstacles, they're all divinely guided so that you can become the person that you need to be, so that you can learn the information that you needed, so that moving forward you are the person who you need to be in order to tackle the things ahead of you, so that you have the strength, so that you have the information, so that you have the wisdom, so that you have the emotional capacity and understanding to then get to the place where you were destined to get to. We can see them as these directions, as sort. But even, even if we're unable to perceive of that or to really believe that that's true, at the very least, at the very least, we just need to be very, very attuned and aware of what the meaning is that we're creating about these negative thoughts or experiences. So, so, so important. I had a client one time who— she was in this relationship and things fell apart and she was— I can't remember exactly the wording that she used, but I remember when we were speaking about it, she was like, why does this always happen to me? Because she was on this, on this sort of continual loop or in this pattern of relationships being really great and then, and then really bad and not working out. And so the meaning that she created about that was, this always happens to me. And so, you know, I told her, when things like this happen, it's important for you to feel your feelings about it. You are allowed to be sad. You are allowed to be frustrated. You're allowed to be upset. You're allowed to be pissed. You're allowed to be angry. You are allowed to feel anything that needs to be felt by you. But what I won't allow you to do is to create a meaning that you are unworthy of love or that you are incapable of having a healthy relationship, or that you're never going to find your person, or that this is what always happens to you because you have bad luck. We can feel the negative feelings or emotions that come from a hard experience. Without making it mean anything about ourselves. And that is so, so important. So I want you to think about if you're moving through something right now, or if you've ever been through something in your life that was really hard to kind of reflect and look back. What are the meanings that you created from that experience? What did you make it mean about you? What did you make it mean about your worth? What did you make it mean about your potential? What did you make it mean about your future? It says here, learning how to think is the simple art of recognizing that you choose how you apply meaning and emotion to your life and to your experiences. 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Another sold out her event in under 6 hours with just 8 strategic story slides. No sales calls, no paid ads, just the right frameworks. You'll walk away knowing how to sequence for desire, transition into your seamlessly and sell daily without ever feeling salesy. You already know your offer is incredible, so now it's just time for your stories to sell it like it is. Grab Sold Out Stories today and turn 10 slides or less into your highest converting content. Let's make your next story your most profitable one yet. Click the link in the show notes below and I'll see you inside. So the solution is not to hyperfocus on positivity. But it's actually learning how to turn the shadow aspects of your mind into forces that ignite change and inspire growth. Emotional freedom and inner peace come from knowing what to do when those negative thoughts and feelings arise, because they will. Oh man. I mean, think about that. Emotional freedom and inner peace. When we think about those things, I think we have sort of this fairy tale idea of what that will look like or what that will feel like. Emotional freedom and inner peace is not the absence of problems. It's not the absence of challenges. It's not the absence of bad things happening to you. It's not the absence of scarcity. It's not the absence of fear. It's not the absence of, of doubt. It's the presence of your own inner knowing and ability to be able to shift anything that comes your way. This guy, Jonah Lehrer, is quoted, and he's a neuroscientist and an author, and he explains that we regulate our emotions by thinking about them. Our prefrontal cortexes allow us to think about our own minds. Our brains think about themselves. And this is what psychologists call metacognition, which is another little mindfuck here in this episode. So cool to think about the fact that our brains think about themselves and we actually have that ability because of, because of our prefrontal cortexes. We can actually— our mind can think about itself. And so the example that they give to kind of illustrate this or show how or why this is important is that if we didn't have this level of awareness, we didn't have this ability to think about our own mind, then we wouldn't know that we were afraid of something. For example, like you just have the feeling of being afraid, but if your mind can't think about the feeling of being afraid and register it and say, oh, I'm afraid, then we wouldn't actually have the proper reactivity to it, right? So we wouldn't know that we were afraid of a saber-toothed tiger that's charging at us. And so we wouldn't then go and run to escape it. And if we didn't run away, then what would the point be of having that feeling of fear in the body anyway, right? So we need that metacognition to be able to recognize what's actually happening within our minds and within our bodies and to kind of have that experience of the mind where it looks at itself and goes, oh shit, this is what I'm feeling. And then we could take the proper action or reaction, right? And so there's a quote that says the prefrontal cortex can deliberately choose to ignore the emotional brain. That is, if it determines there is no merit in ascribing meaning. So not only do we have this ability for metacognition, for the mind to think about the mind, but also we can deliberately choose to ignore the mind or to ignore what's called the emotional brain. If we determine that there's no real reason, that there's no real point in creating a meaning out of it. And so again, this all just goes back to really illustrate and hit home this main point that we started with, which was the problem is not the problem. It's how you're thinking about the problem. So if we can choose to not ascribe this damaging or hurtful or illustrative or dramatic meaning to the negative thoughts, then we won't be so reactive to them. I mean, think about this in your own life for real. Like when something happens, we are rarely upset about the physical thing that just happened. We get ourselves so worked up and actually create the emotions in our body of feeling anxious or nervous or stressed or frustrated or sad or pissed or whatever because of the meanings that we've created about that circumstance or about that thing, right? In our— one thing happens, the event occurs, and then the mind already starts to go, well, And then that means that I won't get to have that. And then that means that I won't be able to do this. And then that means that I'll have to spend all this time doing this other thing. And then that means I'm going to waste my time. And that means that I'm going to miss out on this. And, and it's the meanings that we create that actually creates the suffering. Right. And so this is, again, like this whole— you've probably heard this before, but it's like most of your problems in life aren't actually what's happening to you. It's how you're thinking about what's happening to you. And again, I want to be really clear about this. This doesn't mean like if someone dies or if something very traumatic happens, that it's not actually a real problem, like you just need to think about it in a better way. Absolutely not. Right? Like there's so much nuance to this. And what this actually means is that we get to move through those experiences honor them, feel all the feelings related to them, and then afterwards create a better meaning for what happened. Because when we stay with this consistent negative narrative and we prolong it, that is what creates suffering, right? So we can experience bad, hard, sad, challenging things in life and we can move through it and we can honor all of those really hard emotions and feel them fully. But then when we come out the other side of that, we can also go, and this is what I learned, and this is now what I value, and this is what is so important to me, and this is what I'm going to do next, and this is the lesson that I'm taking from it, and this is how it was happening for me, and this is how it strengthened me, and this is how I'm going to choose to view it. Right? Our beliefs are choices. And if we choose to lean into the negative ones, then that is what creates the suffering. But there's actually so much power in our negative thoughts to be able to teach us and mold us and strengthen us and shape us. Because being uncomfortable is what forces us to think of options that we wouldn't have had to imagine before. I want to read this last part to you because I think it's brilliant. It says, the difference between the kind of anxiety that paralyzes you and the kind of fear that accompanies anything brave and worthwhile is discernment, which takes practice. The difference between the kind of people who turn their obstacles into opportunities and the kind of people who are crushed beneath the weight of their own uncertainty is knowledge and awareness. It's everything that we've learned about the obstacle becoming the way, about your mess becoming your message, about your setbacks being the setups for what was going to happen next for you in life and how everything was really just guiding you to the ultimate destination. Where you were always designed to end up at. So if you are someone who struggles with negative thoughts, fear, doubt, uncertainty coming up and kind of eating you alive from time to time, I don't want you to try and Band-Aid those thoughts and cover them up and push them down and suppress them and just not think about them so that you can stay in a positive vibe. I want you to explore what those negative thoughts might actually have to teach you and really look for the lessons. And even if it's not a lesson yet because you feel like you're so in the thick of it that there's no way you could have learned anything yet because you're just sobbing on the bathroom floor, you don't know how things are going to work out. Trust me, I have been there too. If you can't find the lesson yet, at least allow it to help you find the direction. Because so much of what we struggle with mentally is coming up for us for a reason. And there may be something in your life that's not working out. It may be a job or a relationship or a situation, or there may be some boundaries that need to be set. It may be something that keeps happening over and over again, and you're wondering why. Find the direction that this negative thought or experience is trying to knock on the door and say, hey, this is where you need to go, because the negative thought is a teacher. It always has something to teach you if we are willing to look for it. And so this is the power of negative thinking. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. If you did, please take a screenshot, share it to your Instagram stories, tag me at @samanthadaly and @makeshifthappenpodcast. Or you can copy the link to this episode and text it to a friend, a sister, a mom, a coworker, someone who you know would resonate and enjoy listening to this. Thank you guys so much for continuing to always share the podcast and post about it. It helps so much. I appreciate you. All right. I love you guys. I will see you next week. Bye.