How To Have A Real Positive Mindset
Gurus for years have taught about emotional avoidance.
There is a lot to criticize about Tony Robbins. The fact his seminars are behind closed doors makes it pretty ominous and shady about what is going on behind there.
After all, other closed door industries — like Hollywood acting and sports — are fitting industries for a lot of predators. Jim Jordan would know and so would Harvey Weinstein.
But despite Robbins overall behaviour, one thing I can agree with is his work to some extent. Specifically the way that it’s delivered.
I wouldn’t call his methods entirely that helpful as dealing with trauma or going through therapy isn’t as bombastic as Robbins delivers. Often times that sort of shock therapy backfires and people are worse off than they started.
Still, despite what follows after his delivery (and sometimes denying people’s emotions by saying they’re “liars”), people with depression, emotional trauma, and other deeper and emotionally complex situations are seeing him.
And I think that’s partially a good thing because of one thing of note.
When people are seeing him, they are forced to acknowledge their own emotions.
By no means is Tony Robbins that great. Yes, he’s been talking for 30+ years and helping people out with their own emotional problems. But he’s no therapist. He, like so many other gurus focus on the high emotional highs to help people overcome issues.
He’s hugged rape victims on stage really hard. Sometimes he gets those people to give a hug to three random men. Other times he gets people to dance and just have a good time. That or he gets people to run over hot coals.
That’s not worth the thousands people spend at his events, but in the self-help world, that is better than most other popular options.
Because other popular options have people fixated on positivity.
So many self-help gurus are focused on the positive side of things. In order to grow and excel in life, they believe that one has to manifest what they want. This naturally transitions to things like negative thinking, doubting, or hesitation being these terrible things that should be purged from your mindset.
In a world where everyone is pushed to be overwhelmingly positive, the seemingly best option out there is spending thousands to have a tall man yelling at you, getting you to dance in a crowded venue, and getting you to subtly accept your position in life without actually solving much of it.
There has to be a better way.
The reality is that a real positive mindset isn’t what a lot of people push. To start, it’s not actually all rainbows and sunshine all the time. It’s not sustainable and it will likely make you into a self-improvement junkie rather than a genuine grower.
Having a positive mindset is about being progressive with yourself while being realistic with yourself and who you are as a whole. Here is what a real positive mindset looks like and how to achieve it.
Start With Knowing Who You Are
Some will say you need to go and discover yourself. I will be working on saying more that it’s key to know who you are.
Discovering yourself implies that when you’ve “found yourself” that that is who you are and you’ll never change. The reality is that we’re constantly evolving and changing.
2023 me isn’t who I’ll be through 2024. I plan to make changes to myself both internally and externally.
Lose weight. Read more. Start journalling. Genuinely pour myself into my writing and Youtube channel. These things will be changing me by the end of this year.
Some things won’t be changing of course. We still have particular values that we hold dear to us. We’re still going to hold biases and do things that speak to our values as well. But even with that, we’re still going out there to explore. To change. To grow.
To entertain the thought that maybe what we believed before was wrong. Maybe not entirely. But maybe partially.
All of this reminds me of the final Calvin and Hobbes comic strip that Bill Watterson did.
“Let’s go exploring!”
It’s not just about exploring the world and what it has to hold, but also to our new selves. To explore new thoughts, avenues, and be genuinely curious about ourselves.
Make a point of reminding yourself that you know who you are, but you don’t know who you’ll be until you get out there and explore. Do that, and you’ll start to think and see the world a little differently.
Continue On By Thinking Positively
This is where the real positive mindset begins to develop and shift around. It’s unlike your typical positive thinking that books like The Secret or The Power of Thinking BIG push.
Our mindset isn’t like a big building where we need to fill every “room” with positive thoughts. Nor do we attract everything in our lives by merely thinking we’ll earn it.
Positive thinking is more along the lines of being a certain kind of confident in ourselves. Confident not that we’re entitled to whatever we think we deserve, but rather confident in how things are going to play out.
You see, positive thinking is more about being positive around the things we can influence and have more control over in our lives. With thousands of thoughts going on in our mind at a time, we can’t always have complete control over our thoughts.
Sometimes we’re going to have negative thoughts. Sometimes we’re going to remember bad things. Sometimes we’ll be thinking about past failures.
And we sure as hell can’t have complete control over other human beings beyond ourselves.
But while we don’t have control over those things, we do have some level of control over ourselves and how we think from time to time. For example, I use a productivity tool to help me focus. This gives me more control over distractions on my desk as I write. It leads me to having these deeper focus sessions that I thoroughly enjoy more than my previous productivity methods.
And I discovered that tool by simply being open and telling myself that my old method might not be the most effective and I should give it a shot.
Positivity isn’t about being right all the time or happy all the time. It’s about entertaining the fact you might be wrong about something and that your life could be better if you get out and explore a bit.
With the previous step priming you for that, this step of thinking positively will at least push you to try something new. To actually follow through with something and see if it’s for you.
And if it’s not working, you make changes and pivot.
Finalize With Reflection
And how we pivot is through the final step: reflecting.
Getting to this stage is a matter of observing yourself as you’re doing the thing that you want to be observing. It’s about having an open mind and really figuring out if this is for you or whether to continue deeper.
It’s about weighing options and to seriously think about the immediate gains you’re getting from this while keeping in mind long-term values too.
This is important because many self-help gurus have us focus on the immediate in your face value that you’re getting rather than letting us take a step back and look at the big picture. What so many gurus sell is the high emotions that hit you like a Tony Robbins seminar filled with dancing people like they’re attending a rock concert rather than a secret self-help seminar.
It’s crucial because once you step back and look at the practicality of it all, a lot of the magic disappears. And all that’s left is figuring out if there was any genuine change within you that you’d actually use to steer your life.
At least with a Tony Robbins seminar it might actually get us to recognize it’s a waste of time or not as helpful and prompt us to do something better for ourselves. This is exactly what Noah Kagan did in 2017 and he recorded some of the improvements he made after he walked out of it part way in.
But it’s essential to finish that off with anything. After reading a self-help book, think about what you’ve read and whether it’ll help you in any way. Were your initial expectations and goals satisfied by the end of it?
When it comes to reflection, it’s key to remember what your goals and expectations are. If you know your current self and what you’d like to grow into, then you’ll know your values and what you’d hope to gain from something.
Doesn’t always have to be entirely. But seeing signs of improvement is a good sign to continue moving forward with the thing you’re reflecting on and to watch your progress.
And if there is no merit that you’re noticing, then it’s best to figure out why that is, and to look for something else.
So many self-help gurus don’t encourage this and focus on the hype because it’s the easier route. Negativity or critical thinking is to be avoided because it could lead us to potentially realizing we don’t actually need what this person is saying, selling, or endorsing.
This is on top of what they’re saying isn’t all that helpful for us.
This final step truly reinforces the previous steps together because you do think critically and it brings together everything to the forefront. The reason Robbins is so popular is because underneath all the dancing, and the “quick fixes” he provides people, the audience creates an atmosphere where people at least talk about their problems and keep them in mind throughout the seminars.
And like Noah Kagan, that simple acknowledgement can lead to some people working on their issues in their own minds and actually improving their lives and making positive changes.
A real positive mindset is one where we’re making constant adjustments in our lives for. It is about constantly learning on a regular basis, but what we’re learning doesn’t always have to be from an article, video, or seminar.
It could be how we feel about something, how we approach the work that we do, or to adjust our thinking about our own values.
We’re always constantly works in progress but that doesn’t mean that we need to build ourselves up to be our version of perfection. Being perfect sounds boring and an existential crisis in the making.
It’s about finding new summits to climb while reminding ourselves to take our time with each one as we go along. Reminding ourselves that the path is uncertain but that we’ll get to the top eventually if it’s something we deem worthwhile for us.
That is what a positive mindset looks like.
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