This topic is so crucial right now, because the world is hurting so badly. Negativity rules! And I’m an extremely positive man!
But I cannot deny reality, in the past 45 years of being a counselor and master life coach, I have never seen the amount of negativity in the world that I’m seeing right now.
Anger. Irritability. Impatience. Procrastination.
Addiction. Relationship challenges. Financial worries. Career concerns.
And the above is just the starting point, this is the time that we all need to gather around together and decide to make some powerful universal changes in the way we treat ourselves, in the way we talk to ourselves, in the way we treat others, and the way we talk to others.
Table of Contents
Causes of a Negative Mindset
But let’s start right at the beginning. What are some of the causes of a negative mindset?
1. Generational curse
Negativity, prejudice, judgment is handed down from one generation to another, and we know that probably one of the most powerful ways that someone will pick up a negative attitude is by being around highly judgmental people in their most formable years of 0 to 18.
2. What you watch
Especially now with the political insanity, the wars all over the world, and more. We have to be so in tune with what we’re watching.
Too many people are watching the news for too many hours a day or week and you have to be super careful if you want a positive attitude to not get sucked into the vortex of negative news.
3. What you listen to
It’s the same thing as the above it just were talking about podcast or YouTube videos that you have in the background, listening, if they’re filled with judgment, negativity, hate, anger, which many of these podcasts and YouTube programs consist of quite frankly, there’s no way you’re going to be able to listen to that on a regular basis and have a great mindset.
4. What you read
Social media can be a place to go and post pictures of your puppy pictures of your partner, but the real problem is when people get to reading every post and arguing with people. This can turn even the most positive individual into a negative monster.
5. Who you hang out with
Oh my Lord, if this isn’t one of the most important traits of someone who is negative, it’s quite easy to see when you find out who they’re hanging around with and why they have a negative attitude!
I don’t care if you’re the Dalai Lama, if you’re surrounding yourself on a daily basis with people who are speaking only about negativity, conspiracy theories, we are in a world of hurt! Our attitude will suck.
6. Lack of training in emotional regulation.
This leads to self-centeredness. This leads to arrogance. This leads to a negative mindset and a desire to be right at all costs.
I could go on and on with probably another 20 reasons for why we have in general such a negative mindset going around in the world today, but I think if you just look at the above, that’s a pretty good place to start with.
How We Can Turn It Around
And then how do we turn this all around? Well, it’s actually quite easy!
If we go back to the steps that created the negativity, the simplest thing in the world, at least it sounds simple at first, would be just to walk in the opposite direction, correct?
But it’s not that easy to do. If it was, there be no one with a negative attitude in the world today.
The problem? The subconscious mind. Once we have entered into the world of negativity, complaining, victimhood, judgment, bullying…Once we’ve gone into this environment on a regular basis, the subconscious mind picks this up as habits that we want to continue!
The subconscious mind will just continue to give you what you give it! So if most of the time you’re spending on the news, social media arguing, judging people on YouTube… Judging people because of the presidential insanity… The subconscious mind thinks that this is what we want.
The subconscious says well, “if David is continuing to watch the news, and then he calls his friend Mark and they complain for an hour and a half about how much crap is going on in our political system, it will continue to encourage us to stay with the pattern of watching the insanity on TV and then discussing the insanity with other insane people!”
Of course, I’m laughing right now, not to call people, insane, and judge them, but actuality if you have a negative mindset, and you’re not taking care of what you watch, what you read, what you listen to, who you hang out with, there is not a chance in the world that you can become that positive, goal seeking missile that you’re here to become !
Let’s turn it around, let’s turn our attitudes around so that we can all become more positive and less judgmental.
I have a great story of a former client of mine that went through our life coach training certification, we’ve been training people to become certified life, coaches in several different areas, since 1996, including certification for mental health coaches, certification for addiction coaches, annd much much more.
But my client called me about a year after he had been certified. He had a great number of clients. His business was booming and he said he had a talk to me like right away!
When I finally got a chance to talk to him, he was so open and honest about how, he was getting himself into trouble on Twitter (now known as X).
He was arguing with a woman, someone who he argued with on a regular basis before he became a certified life coach, and all the sudden she must’ve went and looked at his bio where he had put he was now certified, And this was her response to him.
“I see that you’re a certified life coach, I’m sure that the person who certified you would be very proud of you on this platform arguing with me every day.
It might be time for you to look in the mirror and ask yourself, “is arguing on this format. What a certified life coach is supposed to do?”
As you can imagine, he was very upset, but he was more upset with himself for letting the habit of wanting to be right and arguing on social media.
So changing into a positive mindset means looking at the people that we hang out with and evaluating, are they healthy or unhealthy for me?
And then the difficult move would be, when you find that you have two or three or four unhealthy friends or unhealthy acquaintances, you have to make a decision then to decrease your time with them immensely if you want to change into a positive mindset.
And the same thing goes with what you listen to, what you read, what you watch, everything is tied together, so having a more positive mindset is not that hard if you’re willing to change the above and stop watching, listening, and reading information that gets you upset or irritated.
And the last thing I’m going to share, and we have all of my clients doing this, is first thing in the morning we ask everyone to stay electronic free for one hour!
We all should know by now that how we start our day is one of the most crucial moments of our existence.
So if you want to have a positive mindset, take the first 60 minutes with no electronics and get into deeper meditation, deeper journaling, deeper prayer work. Think about all of the different things you could do to enhance your own mindset, to enhance your own positivity by taking that first hour every day just for you!
That first hour becomes, “the positive power hour”, because there’s no way you can walk away from putting 60 minutes into your own personal growth without feeling great about yourself.
Share these messages with your clients. Share these messages with your friends. Let’s all get back on track, we can totally turn this around in our country. If we start doing what I’ve written here…today!
David Essel
David Essel, M. S. O.M., is a #1 best-selling author (15), counselor, executive coach, international speaker, radio/TV/podcast host, sports psychology coach, and all-faiths minister whose mission is to positively affect 2 million people or more every day in every area of life, regardless of their current circumstances.
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