Hey there, this is Steve Pomeroy and I am your host for the Believe in Big Change podcast. It's good to be with you as always. Hope life is treating you well. Looks like the summertime is coming to a close. Hopefully you've had a wonderful summer. Today's podcast, we're going to focus on the negative mindset. Talk about how we can fall into this, how it can affect us, and then how to change it. So the name of the podcast is Five Ways to Change a Negative Mindset. I'm going to talk first a little bit about where does this negative mindset come from? Some of these might be a little more obvious than others. And I've broken them down into three areas. The first one is stress. You know, as we know, stress can come in many different forms. And if we're not actively taking good care of ourselves, mind, body, spirit, the stress can really take its toll on us. Stress can come in the form of the job at your workplace. You may have a deadline, a project that's due. You may think you have a boss that's being unfair, treating you poorly. You may not have gotten the raise that you were hoping for. Or you just may realize you don't like your job. That's a lot of stress right there. You may have taken on more responsibility. Maybe you're understaffed right now. Relationships can cause stress, as you probably know. Could be relationships on the home front with a significant other. Relationships with friends, family, coworkers. That can be stressful. There's financial stress. you know some people are trying to figure out how to make this month's rent how to pay their bills the stress of trying to put your kids to college private schools there may be medical bills building up. You know, health can add a lot of stress to our life. That's another one. If we're not taking good care of ourselves, it can catch up to us. There can be legal challenges going on in your life that can be stressful. There can be cost associated with that. So those are a handful of areas that can add a lot of stress to our life. That can get us thinking negatively, and we don't even realize it sometimes. That's a big one. A lot of times this can become the norm. We're always on the go. There's a lot of stress, family, work, etc., etc. We may not even realize it. We're completely unaware that we're negative. The next area ties in a little bit to the first one. Unhealthy, toxic environments. You know, this can be early on in your life. As a child, there could be stress in the family for various reasons. You know, the parents could be having a difficult time. The parents, one of them or both of them could be caught up in, you know, addiction. you know family can be hard i'm not here to blame the parents you know that's not what this podcast is about we're talking about identifying how these things can affect our life you know i mentioned relationships and work so if you grew up in a rather toxic environment or is very toxic. Plenty of people that had to leave their home, perhaps with a parent, to leave a situation, decided maybe it was better to go it alone, maybe even go to the streets. That's a lot of stress right there. So without us really knowing that this could be already have become a learned behavior. And in terms of, you know, geez, I didn't realize I was being so negative. Sometimes in environments, it could be family, other relationships later on in life, work, the other things that I mentioned, you know, what you see and learn early on in life is what you're probably going to do because that's what you knew then. So we're going to talk about that in terms overcoming it and learning to be more gentle with ourselves. That'll help change a negative mindset. Next thing you know, we're attracting unhealthy people. And there's a saying, misery loves company. The third area that's been identified, this is a big one too. They're all big. Unresolved trauma that could have started at a young age and continued for you throughout your teenage years and well into adulthood. And again, this can become a learned behavior, a learned mindset for us. Trauma can come in all forms. Physical, sexual, emotional, mental abuse. That's a lot of abuse there. And if you believe this is something that has affected you in your life, I really encourage you to get some help for this. And I believe getting help and asking for help is a great strength, not a weakness. There's other forms of trauma. It could be traumatizing to have to pick up and move. Job loss can be traumatizing. That's a big one. Divorce. A breakup. They say most of us, by the time we're adults, have experienced trauma at some level. Now I'd like to give you some examples, and I wrote down a handful here I'd like to just share with you, of how we can get negative and not even realize it. Here's one. I will never be accepted unless I am perfect. Well, that's a lot to sign up for. I did a podcast not too long ago on perfectionism. It doesn't exist. So we're signing up for the impossible. So if you really believe that, I encourage you to take a look at, you know, perhaps your standards being way too high on realistic and you're signing up for the impossible. And remember something, and we're going to talk about this in a few minutes on how to change his mindset. You know, there's a book called The Four Agreements, written by Don Miguel Ruiz. And he talks about self-rejection being the greatest sin that we can commit as humans. And I'm not saying that to spark a religious conversation here. But that's a big one when we reject ourselves. We're setting ourselves up to fail. we're betraying ourselves when we do that stay away from the perfection I made a mistake now I'm a failure I didn't get an A not everyone praised my efforts I've been there, I can remember giving presentations and the majority of people liked it and said, good job. And then a couple were kind of critical and maybe they're just in a negative mindset. But I took that real personal and my mind magnified it and I forgot about all the compliments and started to obsess about a couple of people that were, I believe, critical of it. they seem angry they're angry what did I do wrong that's negative right there somebody's angry and we start looking at ourselves a lot of times it has nothing to do with us and if it does there's ways to address it and if we have a part in it to take ownership I wonder what will happen next to ruin this. You ever heard of Murphy's Law? We think that long enough and say that long enough. Guess what's going to happen? Something negative is going to happen that spoils the party. They said no because something is wrong with me. That kind of goes back to the first one on self-rejection. you know sometimes it's the universe's way of protecting us and maybe redirecting us to something that's better for us in life so at the end of the day we end up with this powerful self-critic the self-critic they say was born like the first time we were really afraid in life and that its job is to protect us, but it's not protecting us when it doesn't have anything nice to say about you, me, and everybody else. That's where it ends up at the end of the day if we allow it to take over. So we start to become afraid of what could go wrong. We live in fear. We're almost paralyzed, so very difficult to take action. so we end up procrastinating. We give up easily and quit. We start to view ourselves, and maybe others do, as being an underachiever. And we start attracting unhealthy people in our life. Which leads me to, what are the effects of a negative mindset? I mean, we're human. We can all get a little negative. We can all self-pity. We can get our feelings hurt. We're human. It's okay to experience those feelings, those emotions. We just don't want it to consume us and take over. So what happens if it does? This is going to really hurt our self-esteem. We're going to have a low opinion of ourselves. We start to question our worth. We doubt our abilities. Very difficult to grow as much as we may want to when we're in this mindset and we don't know how to get out of it. It's tough. So our self-esteem fluctuates. Then we put it in the hands of other people. And some people aren't healthy, as you know, and they can take advantage of us, of our vulnerability, try to manipulate us amongst other things. We stay in this mindset, but we're at a point where we have very little to almost no self-awareness about this. Again, if it started early on, it can become, or even later in life, you get around certain people, environments, it becomes the norm. It's the new norm. So again, very tough to do your best and get into growth mode. Another effect is what I mentioned before is very powerful self-critic. Doesn't have anything nice to say about anything. That's not very helpful. That's not very positive. That's not an attitude of gratitude. So what's happening is that we start to blame ourselves for all of this. What's wrong with us? So this shame of thinking we're not enough. We don't have the skills. They weren't taught to us. The tools and the support because we're around negative people in negative situations. That's what we're attracting. So it can become very toxic. It can destroy, really. Another one is perfectionism. I touched on that earlier. That leads us to this all or nothing mentality. I'm either all in, doing my best. Oh, I made a mistake. I'm a failure. Why bother? And we give up easily. You ever remember doing that? We self-sabotage a lot of things, including ourselves, relationships, opportunities. Even if we're in this mindset and a gift is given to us and it falls into our lap, a lot of times we end up ruining it, spoiling it because of our mindset. Now we're into fear. I mean, this thing can really downward spiral. So we're afraid of what? Rejection. I talked about that. abandonment you know uh oh I've got to be perfect I don't want this person to leave me oh what did I do this time boy that's a lot of stress right there fear of failure so we don't try we don't even try we're rejecting ourselves think about that leaves to self pity and then it can lead to we feel we were a victim. Now we've all probably been victimized in our lives in some way, shape, or form where people took advantage of us and it hurts. It really hurts, especially if we trusted them and we feel really betrayed. The key here is whether or not we choose to remain a victim. If we choose to remain, and that is a choice, we have now rendered ourselves powerless. We can't help ourselves, and nobody else can. They can't support us. We become the victim. That's a very potent, toxic, and maybe even deadly combination because it can lead to substance abuse. and depression to name a couple. So now let's talk a little bit about how we can change this mindset. I was thinking about the order of these five things and I'm not sure that it really matters because I believe they're all important and have been very helpful to me on a daily basis. Put down the first one is self-compassion. We got to start being gentle with ourselves, just like we would somebody that was struggling and they asked for our help. We'd be positive and say, don't get too down about this. Let's go do something to cheer you up. You can do this for yourself because this work doesn't have to rely on anybody else. It's you. It's an inside job, as they say. You take your power back today. And being compassionate and gentle with yourself is so important. If we continue to beat ourselves up and we're in perfectionism mode, oh man, I've been there. It beats you down. It's a total beat down. Self-compassion, don't sign up for perfectionism. It doesn't exist. How can you do that? Look for progress. Always look for progress. Always look for what's good about this. I'll talk about how we can do that. How we can get there. Now, when I talk about self-compassion, we want to hold ourselves accountable because we're the ones that make this happen at the end of the day. So one of the things that you may have read about, heard about, there's quotes about this, is speak positively and think positively of yourself and others. Being negative is not going to solve our problems. Now, I put a note here because if you're uncomfortable talking positive about yourself, now I'm not talking about being braggadocious, boastful, conceited, and cocky, but maybe you're afraid of being viewed that way, concerned about it. I get that. Just don't speak poorly of yourself. Make that commitment to yourself. Don't beat yourself up in front of others because there can be some toxic people around and they could take advantage of that. And remember this, you are not your past. You did the best you could with what you knew then. Now you have an opportunity to know yourself better, treat yourself better, and do better. Number two, self-awareness. now I've talked about this before in previous podcasts and I talk a lot about meditation I've had people say you know what I just can't meditate I mean if you know how to worry you can meditate it's the opposite of worrying even for five minutes but let's say you struggle with meditation it doesn't have to mean anything other than sitting still and being present, letting the thoughts, whether they're negative or positive, come and go and not judging them, just observing them in terms of what's coming up for you. When we know what's going on with us, we have a chance to change the mindset and get into solution mode. So what I'm going to suggest is find five minutes a day to be present with you. Five minutes. You can read. Maybe there's some meditative reading. Journal. Maybe you like to draw. I'm not an artist, so, you know, but maybe you are. There is prayer and meditation. I find it very useful. There's walks in nature. If you're walking in nature, find a safe place and sit with yourself for five minutes. The key is to not judge yourself. When we're present, we find strength, hope, courage, love, and the answers start to come. We find freedom from people, places, and things that were really bothering us. So being present is where it happens. Everything, the solutions, the change, your growth, boundaries, standing up for yourself, all happen in the present. They don't happen in the past. It's done. Can't, we can't, we're not in a time machine. We can worry if we want to do that to ourselves. But everything happens, action in the present. Give yourself this chance. Number three, acceptance. this isn't an easy one I work on this regularly acceptance of yourself that that's where it starts learn to start accepting yourself more if you make a mistake learn to be playful about it like when we were kids just kind of oh yeah oops I did it okay you know that's all right I forgot something we're human I'm human. So acceptance of yourself, other people, places, things, and situations. We find that in the present. We realize that everything happens for a reason. You've probably heard that saying before. And we start to accept that besides our thoughts, feelings, beliefs and actions, we're not in control of the other stuff. We're in control of ourselves and that's a key. That is the key is taking our power back and getting in control of ourselves. We find that when we're in acceptance that we're more honest. If we're out of acceptance of a situation or another person and it's all about being right, we're probably not going to be as honest, open-minded, and willing to change. We learn to accept people for as they are, reframe the situation a little bit, work on ourselves and change. Or there's times where we accept it and we have to move away from it. That can happen too. So we can reframe, change our mindset, or accept. We can move on. Number four, positive self-talk. It's a big one. What you think and believe you become. You're feeding negative thoughts to yourself and the universe. What do you think is going to happen? More negative things are going to come our way. I've even used little things like a net positive approach. You know, I'm in recovery and there were times early on where I was struggling. My self-esteem was beat down and a lot of it was from this that I'm talking about. I literally sometimes would reframe a situation and say, you know, I'd be out somewhere socially and it'd be like, well, two people acted like they didn't know me and seemed to be mean to me. That's how I perceived it. But wait a minute. There were two new people I met and three other people that said hello. Five minus two is plus three. That's a net positive. I found that very helpful. I probably still use it and don't even realize it. Always focusing on progress. You want to sit down and evaluate? Look at the progress. What happens eventually is our subconscious catches on to what we're doing because we drive this. And it starts working for us. Positive things start happening. We start attracting positive people. We find ourselves in the solution and not the problem. That's another question I like to ask myself in meditation. Am I a part of the solution or the problem right now? Geez, I'm pretty negative about it. Well, I'm definitely not in solution mode yet. So this leads me to the last one, and I've brought this one up in numerous podcasts. Gratitude. You can be negative. You're not very grateful. more negative things are going to happen. Start looking for what's good about things. We'll start attracting better things. Bottom line is with gratitude, it isn't going to hurt you. Incorporate it into your daily practice. It's not going to do any damage to you. Bottom line is with gratitude, we can choose more ways to attract more positive things in your life or more things to worry about. Straight up. That's our choice. So that's what I got for you today. It's good to be with you as always. Feel free to reach out to me directly. I'm on Facebook, Steve Pomeroy and Believe in Big Change. I'm also on Instagram. I write a little bit. These days, I've been writing about homelessness. It's not getting a lot of attention. So I'm on Medium where I post some articles as well. So these podcasts can be found on Buzzsprout. I have other podcasts and I love it when you reach out. Some people take the opportunity to do that. It helps me as well. So I appreciate you as always. I love you. I send you strength, hope, courage, and love. And please let me know how you're doing. Good luck with everything and God bless you.