536. Escape Negativity

Negativity is not just the result of the world around you. It is created by your brain and only by your brain. And I’m going to teach you today four strategies that will get you out of negativity, even though when you fall into it, your brain wants to stay there desperately. I’ve got four powerful strategies. We’re going to go through them one at a time, and when you execute these things, not only will you feel better today, but you will start creating more of what you want for tomorrow. Let’s go.

Welcome to Better Than Happy, the podcast where we transform our lives by transforming ourselves. My name is Jody Moore. In the decade-plus I’ve been working with clients as a Master Certified Coach, I’ve helped tens of thousands of people to become empowered. And from empowered, the things that seemed hard become trivial, and the things that seemed impossible become available, and suddenly, a whole new world of desire and possibility open up to you. And what do you do with that?

Well, that’s the question… what will you do? Let’s find out.

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Hello, everybody. Welcome to the podcast today. Thanks so much for joining me. We’re going to talk about escaping negativity today. And I want to tell you that it’s a difficult thing to do, especially because most of us were never really taught any practical strategies when we were younger or no matter what age we are. Most people don’t know how to teach this. That’s why they didn’t teach us because the adults who raised us or the people in our lives before us, they don’t know either.

But there are some simple things you can do, which we’re going to walk through today, when you find yourself stuck in negativity. So, first, I want to mention that getting in a place of negativity, whether it’s for a short term or even for a longer period of time, does not mean there’s something wrong with you, okay? It does not mean that you’re weak, it does not mean that you’re undisciplined, and it doesn’t even mean that you’re just a negative person. It means that your brain is trying to protect you. All right? Our brains tend towards negativity. We call this the negativity bias, right? Because something that is potentially dangerous or minimizing our life experience in some way, according to our brains, should be more relevant than something that is positive, right?

If I’m sitting here in my office, as I am right now, there’s a lovely breeze. I have the door open and the window open because I have this back office behind my house. And so there’s a breeze kind of moving through behind me. It feels really good. It’s a beautiful day. I can hear birds chirping outside. My kids are home from school. We’re getting ready to enjoy our weekend. Life is good, right? But if suddenly a fire starts outside my door or in the corner of my office or something near me, right? I don’t need to be positive. I don’t need to stop and go, “But what a lovely day it is.” I need to be hyper focused on that fire, on trying to get the fire out, on trying to keep myself and other people safe from that fire and protect property and whatever else, right?

So, it makes sense that the brain will hyper focus on negativity and tune out positivity if it believes there is danger. Now, granted, our brains believe that a lot of things are dangerous, they’re actually not dangerous. Part of the reason for this is that the part of the brain that cues danger signals does not differentiate between physical danger and emotional danger. We live in a world where there’s a lot more emotional danger to worry about than physical danger. Although there is still physical danger, right? But if I’m worried that people are going to judge me, I’m going to be embarrassed, I’m not going to fit in, I’m not going to be liked, or I’m going to be judged, etc., my brain views that as dangerous, just like it would be like, wait, is that a snake out there in the bushes? And if so, is that snake dangerous? Same part of the brain gets triggered.

And so, we’ve created a lot of “danger” in our minds that is actually, when we stop and take a look at it, not life threatening, not even necessarily life minimizing. We might even say as a normal part of life, right? So, the brain’s a little bit overactive in many cases, but still, I just want to be clear that if you find yourself in a negative place, again, maybe it’s just for a day or a week, or maybe it goes on for longer, the worst thing you could do is start judging yourself for it and start labeling yourself in a way that creates even more negativity.

I also don’t find it useful for you to be judging other people. It’s just not useful. It doesn’t help bring more positivity. It brings more negativity. Now we have your own negativity plus your judgment on top of it, or someone else’s negativity and then you’re bringing more negativity as you judge them. So, I just want to be very clear about that because what I’m going to teach you next is how to get out of negativity, but not because you should and not because anybody else should, either. Sometimes we just want to be negative for a while, or we just need to for some reason, or maybe it goes against our value system to think positively about something, or maybe we just don’t know how or we don’t have the strength. We didn’t get enough sleep, or really worried about something else and this is just a final straw. There can be all kinds of reasons why we end up in negativity. It is part of the human condition. It is okay. It is appropriate.

But when you notice, “Huh, I’m in a pretty negative place about this thing or just in general. I don’t think I want to do that anymore. I’m kind of sick of feeling this way. I’m sick of not showing up for my goals the way I want to,” or “I’m sick of being resentful and I’m sick and I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.” I remember feeling that way when I first found coaching. I was like, “I got these kids everywhere and I’ve got this great husband and I’ve got a job and I have so many things going for me. Why am I so unhappy? Why am I so grumpy? Why do I snap at everyone? Why do I kind of hate everything and I’m irritated all the time and I don’t like myself and I’m not excited about anything?” And I just recognized like, “I am in a negative place.”

I’ve gone negative. And I got to figure out how to get out of this. That’s what I’m going to teach you today. I want to give you one other story before we dive in. So, a few years ago, I was in the car with one of my kids, and they were talking about one of their teachers at school. And this is a teacher that I had heard stories about before. They were mostly positive stories. It was more like my kid talking about their day, but they would share things that the teacher had said or done, and overall, they liked this teacher. And suddenly my child said, “Mom, I don’t know what’s happened, but she complains all the time now. She’s constantly telling us about her boyfriend that broke up with her and how she hates her job and she’s trying to find a new job, and she’s worried about money and it seems like all she does is complain.” And then she’s also really grumpy and she doesn’t let us out of class on time because she gets mad at us for being loud and whatever, right?

And as my daughter was telling me this story, I remember thinking about her teacher, “Oh, dang it. Her brain went negative.” Her brain went negative. Now, it’s not a switch that flips like that, the way I am describing it. That’s just how I think about it because it helps me when I notice it in myself or in other people to just be more compassionate. This happens, I feel like, from time to time where just like, I don’t know, it feels like a series of events happens, or maybe it’s one major event that triggers it. Maybe you’re also maybe not getting enough sleep or something’s going on with your health or maybe somebody you love is struggling in some way. So you’ve got something else on your mind and then suddenly everything just feels harder and things that used to not bother you at all now are kind of getting on your nerves, and you’re just less patient and you start noticing a whole array of things.

I actually had this happen to me recently on a couple of occasions when I’ve gone down too much of a little rabbit hole on social media, right? Of finding what terrible things people are saying about each other in the comments and just kind of some things that go back and forth on social media that have made me go, “What? Why are people so angry? And why are they so hateful? And why are we so worked up about this?” And then my brain flips into negativity for a minute and I notice myself being either more afraid and worried about things or just overall less patient, more annoyed even just by little things like, “Why do the dogs trash that couch?” You know? In this way? Like, “Why do we even have dogs? Why can’t we ever have nice furniture?” And it’s just like one thing leads to another and it’s like a snowball. The emotions carry a lot of momentum, right? And they snowball on top of each other. And that’s what I call my brain going negative or another person’s brain going negative. It’s like, “Oh shoot, they just went negative.”

Now, it’s okay. I say, “Oh shoot, oh darn,” because I feel bad for the person. And again, there is momentum behind it, and so it does require some effort to get out of it. But you absolutely can get out of it whenever you’re feeling this way. So, let me just make sure I’ve covered kind of some signs so that you can ask yourself, “Wait, has my brain gone negative?” And again, it might be in general with your life or it might just be in a specific area.

So, again, maybe you feel down a lot. Maybe you aren’t taking action consistently towards something you want to be working on. You’re telling yourself you want to do this thing, but you’re not actually showing up and doing it. That may be an indicator that your brain’s gone negative. Maybe you just have this overall belief that things are a lot harder or worse than they used to be in the world. I hear this quite a bit from people who say, “Yeah, the world, it’s a tough place right now. It’s a tough time to be alive.” And I don’t know, you can think whatever you want, but I kind of think it’s always been hard to be alive. I think a lot of parts of being alive today are much easier than they’ve ever been. So, I kind of think it’s always 50/50, always has been, and it always will be.

Maybe you’re just really resentful or overwhelmed. Again, if you have some like dominant emotions that are starting to feel like just a part of your personality, or maybe they’ve always felt like a part of your personality. Maybe you feel like people describe you as grumpy, or you describe yourself as kind of grumpy or worried or something. This does not mean that you’re a grumpy person. I don’t believe there’s such a thing as a negative person. Your brain has just gone negative, and maybe it’s been that way for a very long time, but I promise we can get you out of it.

Here’s another good indicator which I’ve noticed in myself frequently. When my brain goes negative, I start complaining a lot. I complain a lot more. I always complain a little. But when my brain really goes negative, I complain a lot more. Now, you got to be cautious about being aware of this, okay? Sometimes it’s easy to miss because some of us, speaking of myself, are pretty good at complaining through humor, right? So it doesn’t sound like, “Wah, wah, poor me. Life is hard.” It sounds like, “Oh, can you believe this?” It sounds like sarcasm. It sounds like cynicism. And I can say it in a funny way and people laugh and they connect with me because they can relate to it. It’s still complaining if I’m talking about what I don’t like, what I think is wrong. This is all a sign that my brain has gone negative.

Okay. So, again, I don’t care how long you’ve been this way. I don’t care if you think this is just your personality. It’s not. We’re going to dive into it today and I’m going to give you some strategies. So, here is the first and most critical strategy, is that you have to be aware that all problems are thought problems. All problems are thought problems. All of your suffering begins with your thoughts. All of it. Yeah, all of it. Which means there is no suffering that exists outside of you or that begins outside of you.

Now, most people that I teach this to and people that are in my coaching programs, they understand this about most areas of their lives. They’re like, “Yeah, I can see that my thinking is the problem,” except for this one area. This one area is causing me, right? It’s when my kid is really suffering or struggling, obviously that causes me pain. Or when I get a negative health diagnosis, or even when I have physical pain, that’s the cause of my suffering. Now, physical pain can be caused by the physical body, but the suffering is from the thought that you’re never going to get better. The suffering is from my kid is going to ruin his life. The suffering comes from your thoughts, and they’re often thoughts about the future, but they could be thoughts about the past. If I had been a better mother, this wouldn’t be happening, etc., or even sometimes thoughts about the present. “Why me? Why is this happening to us? Why don’t things ever work out for us?” These kinds of thoughts cause suffering, right?

Now, again, this doesn’t mean you should never suffer. It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have problems. If all problems are thought problems, shouldn’t we always have positive thoughts? No. Sometimes we should have problem thoughts. Sometimes we should create problems for ourselves. You know why? Our brains are really good at problem solving. You just want to be selective about the problems that you’re creating. Okay? Your brain wants and needs a problem to solve and I want you to give it one. I want you to give it a fun one though whenever you can. Sometimes we get handed something that we want to describe a problem and then we go to work on that problem.

For example, maybe there’s a loss of a job and loss of income in your family. Maybe there is a health diagnosis. Maybe somebody is struggling and I want to think, okay, this is a problem. How can I help contribute positively to what’s going on here? How can I be a positive influence? Or if it is completely my problem to own, what am I going to do to solve for this? What do I want to do? What do I want to think? How do I want to get help? How do I want to get support? Those are sometimes the kinds of problems we have. But many, many, many other times, you, my friend, yeah, I’m talking to you, are making up problems because your brain needs a problem to solve and you haven’t given it a good one. Okay?

This is why I love helping entrepreneurs build businesses. Because building a business is a very useful problem for your brain to go to work on. And it is a problem. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a challenge, is what I mean by a problem, like a story problem, a long math problem. It’s, “Huh, I wonder what I’m going to do next.”

And in order to solve that challenge or problem, you’re going to have to learn a bunch of things, you’re going to have to try a bunch of things, you’re going to have some failure and some success, and then you’re going to learn something new, and then you’re going to grow from there. And that’s so good for you and good for the world outside of you because now you’re contributing something to the world through your business. It’s a win for everybody. It doesn’t have to be building a business that’s your quote unquote problem to solve, but if you don’t have a challenging project or some kind of assignment, maybe it’s volunteer work of some sort, maybe it’s just a hobby you want to pick up, maybe it’s a fun, crazy goal you give yourself. Like, let’s try to win a trip to Hawaii. I don’t know. I don’t really care what it is. It doesn’t matter what it is. I want you to give your brain a problem to solve because if you don’t give it one, it will start making up problems.

One of my sisters and I always talk about this. Made up problems, right? And we all do it at times. What are made up problems? Things like, the house is just not in order again. I just can’t keep it clean. That’s not actually a problem. Do you see what I’m saying? And at the same time, I’m totally fine with you having a clean house and keeping it clean. But if it’s not happening and you’re going to be mad at yourself or resentful at your family or whatever, start moving into blame, shame, and become grumpy over it, I don’t see the upside to that. That is a made up problem. Okay?

That’s just one tiny example. There are so many examples. Let me think of some others that I’ve done in my lifetime. Oh, I’ve made my body a problem so much of the time. Like if only I fit into these jeans better and I looked different in these clothes or if my face looked different and my skin looked different or if I, what’s the matter with me? Or if this person just liked me or if these people weren’t talking bad about me behind my back or if I just was more accepted or if people whatever. Like these are all made up problems. Do you see what I mean? These aren’t actual problems. Now, I’m not trying to minimize whatever you want and need in your life. I don’t want you to go into shame over this. I just want you to decide like, “Huh, maybe I should give myself a problem that is 100% mine to own.” Most of these other problems, I mean, you can do something about your body and things like that, but only to a certain extent. Like I would love to be 4 inches taller than I am. Nothing I can do about that, right? And even if I do want to get healthier or lose weight or something, I don’t think doing it from this as a problem is useful or necessary.

But many of the other problems we make up are not even ours to own. For example, what people are saying online in the comments, I can get upset about, but I’m never going to control all those people online or get social media shut down most likely. That doesn’t feel like the mission I want to go on. So that’s not a problem that’s mine to own. What other people think of me is certainly not mine to own, right? And I’m talking not just about random strangers. I’m talking about your family, your spouse, your children, your in-laws, people you go to church with, all of them. What they think of you is not your problem to solve. It’s not even a problem in the first place, but certainly not yours to own. Who do you want to be and what do you want to think of you? That is yours to own 100%. How do you feel about you? That’s 100% yours to own.

But just sitting around trying to feel better about yourself is not easy to do. I recommend instead that you give yourself a real, fun, useful problem. You adapt a hobby or a goal or a project, like I said before, and you go to work on that and you practice supporting yourself as you do it. Practice giving yourself extra nurturing and compassion and love on the days when you fail or drop the ball, because that’s what you need instead of judging yourself. And practice believing in yourself beyond what is a reasonable amount. Believe that it’s possible for you even before you have any proof, even before you have the skill set to do it. Just decide that you’re going to become a person who figures out how to do it.

All of that is the best way to work on yourself, and it’s the best way to get out of negativity, right? Because made up problems put us in a space of negativity, but fun problems that we choose on purpose that would create something that we want in our lives, put us on a different track. It’s still going to be uncomfortable. You’re still going to have some frustration and things, but it’s the kinds of frustration and negativity that will move you forward. It’s a growth place instead of a stuck, stagnant place. Okay? So all problems are thought problems, be aware of that, and then choose what problem you’re going to give your brain to solve because just telling it there are no problems doesn’t work. Not for a healthy human brain, anyway.

Okay. Number two. Number two thing that will get you out of this negativity cycle that you might get stuck in is to get better at believing in things that you want to believe that can’t be known or proven. Some people, especially in the religious traditions, call this faith. Okay? Faith means to believe in something that can’t be known or proven. What’s the primary song we used to sing? I won’t sing it for you. I’ll just say the words, faith is knowing the sun will rise, lighting each new day. Now, you might say, well, we can prove that. We can’t prove that. We can prove that the sun has risen in the past, but we don’t know what will happen tomorrow. Maybe the sun won’t rise, lighting the day tomorrow. But we choose to believe that it will.

Now, that one’s actually pretty easy to believe because we have lots of proof that it will happen. We have lots of scientific studies and data and evidence and examples of it happening, so that’s actually an easy one to believe. Can you believe that things are going to all work out for you in whatever area you want them to work out? I personally like to do this with little, small things that seem insignificant and don’t matter because of the practice it gives my brain of believing things just because I choose to believe them. Okay? I’ll give you a couple of examples.

So I was on an airplane a couple years ago, flying from Spokane to Seattle, which is a very short flight. It’s one of those flights that like by the time you hit full elevation, then you’re getting ready to come down again, right? So it’s a short flight, but nevertheless, as we sat on the runway, about to take off, the captain came on and said, “We’re not going to be doing beverage service on this flight because it’s going to be very bumpy. We just came from Spokane,” or Seattle, wherever. I can’t remember if I, I think I was going to Spokane. So anyway, “We just came from there. It’s really bumpy, so we’re not and it’s a short flight, so we’re not going to be doing beverage service.”

Well, I’m a person who doesn’t love turbulence on airplanes. I actually do know some people who do, but I don’t. Causes me to have thoughts that make me feel afraid and I just assume not deal with that, especially because I was coming home from somewhere else. This wasn’t my first flight of the day. I just wanted to be home. It was late at night. I’m traveling alone anyway, right?

And so, as we sat there and the captain explained how this was going to be a bumpy flight, I went, “No, it’s not.” I just decided it’s not. Okay? Now I didn’t say that out loud to anyone. I didn’t demand that they serve me drinks. I just decided in my own mind when my brain was like, “Oh no, it’s going to be bumpy and we hate that and I’m probably going to get nervous and whatever.” I just said, “No, it’s not going to be bumpy. It’s going to be smooth.” I just decided. And listen, I don’t have any reason to believe that. In fact, I have plenty of reasons to believe that’s not true. Namely, a pilot who has data that I don’t have, right? But I just chose to believe it. Why would I choose to believe that? Because I just wanted to sit there and relax. There weren’t any bumps happening. We hadn’t even taken off. We’re on the ground, and there’s no point in me getting nervous, right? There’s no point in getting nervous ever. I could manage my brain when the bumps come, but I just decided to do it right then because why not?

So, of course I was right. It was the smoothest flight ever. They still didn’t serve drinks, of course. I knew they wouldn’t, but I was like, “You’re welcome.” Sometimes it happens, right? Now, what’s the worst case scenario? Maybe it would have been bumpy. Okay. Well, then I can either manage my thoughts then or I can just feel nervous. It’s okay to feel nervous. It’s okay to feel afraid, right? But I knew there was no downside to just choosing peace right then. And I can do this in my mind pretty well because I’ve practiced it a lot. And I’ve can even do this with big things. I practiced this when I built my business.

When I first decided I’m going to build this business to a significant level, I’m going to make a big impact and I’m going to make good money, I’m going to support my family doing this, and this is going to be big. And some of the people in my life who I told this to, which I didn’t tell it to many people, but some of the ones I did were like, “Really? How are you going to do that?” And I said, “I don’t know. I just know I’m going to.” I just chose to believe it, with the help of my coach by the way, who coached me around it. And just like when you realize you’re allowed to believe anything you want. I knew it would serve me to believe it. I knew there was no downside to believing it, right? Like me believing I’m going to build my business to whatever level I want to, what’s the downside?

Let’s say I get to the end of the year and I haven’t hit whatever benchmark I thought I was going to hit. Okay, well then people are like, “I don’t want to be disappointed, you know?” And I say, “You know disappointment is an emotion created by your thoughts right then too.” Disappointment is not created by you setting a goal and not achieving that goal. Disappointment is created by what you make it mean, by what you think in your mind. And if you don’t believe you’re going to hit your goal, you’re much less likely to hit your goal. So I just choose to believe in my goal. And then when I get there, either I just process disappointment and go, “All right, I can be disappointed. That’s fine.” I’ll take some deep breaths. I’ll allow it. And might not look and sound quite as peaceful as I’m describing it right now. Maybe I do need to cry. Maybe I get mad. Maybe I need to talk it out with someone. Maybe I need to reassess. All of that’s fine. None of that’s a problem. That’s called being a human being.

But the other option is, I’m not disappointed in you, Jody Moore. I’m so proud of you. Thanks for setting a big goal. Thanks for doing everything you could think of to go for that goal. Thanks for all that you’ve learned. Even if what you’ve learned is what not to do and what doesn’t work, I love you. You’re so much further along. Your business is so much further along now than if we wouldn’t have set a big goal or if we would have just set a tiny goal. We’re so much closer to what we want to create in the world, even though we didn’t hit this, by the way, completely made up arbitrary out of the blue goal. Okay? So, you can just choose to believe in anything you want.

Just earlier this week, I was out with a bunch of friends of mine, a bunch of other women, and we went to see a play in San Diego. And so we stopped to get dinner on the way down, and there was a big group of us. There was like 18 of us. So you know when you travel around with 18 people, it takes a while, because you got to get everyone in cars and you got to get everyone food and just like moving that many people to the same place at the same time takes a while. And we probably, well, I don’t know. Maybe we left at the perfect time, but we probably could have given ourselves a little bit more time. But I had kind of – myself and a friend of mine had kind of planned and organized this event, and we had all the tickets and everything. And so I felt somewhat responsible for making sure to pay attention and get us all where we were going, right?

And so at one point, I found myself kind of getting stressed, like, “Wait, oh, there’s traffic I hadn’t planned on. And this person was a little late or whatever. And I forgot the restaurant like maybe took a little longer to get our food than I thought.” And I started getting nervous like, “What if we get to the play late?” Sometimes they won’t let you in the play late. You have to wait out in the hallway till a certain break, right? And I didn’t want that to happen.

And so, I started to get kind of stressed, and I noticed myself getting short with people and trying to manipulate things. And then I remembered what I’m teaching you here, which is I can just believe whatever I want. And so I said to one of my friends, “You know what? I just decided we’re going to get there exactly on time. It’s going to work out perfectly. We’re going to get there right on time. We’re going to get into our seats right on time and we’re not going to miss a minute of the show. I forgot. I’m allowed to just believe that if I want to,” right?

And so I took a deep breath and I relaxed and I enjoyed my dinner. Now, does this mean I didn’t still pay attention to the time? Of course not. I still paid attention. And in fact, I walked around and said, “Hey everybody, five minutes and then we’re leaving. Make sure you’re ready in five minutes.” But I guarantee I was probably more effective at communicating that because I wasn’t doing it in this like, you know, mean, snarky tone.

And meanwhile, I just got to enjoy the evening so much more because I just decided we’re going to get there right on time. You can just decide that. Did you know this? You can just decide that relationship was meant to end. You can decide that the perfect job is right around the corner trying to find you and you’re going to find it any minute now. That the perfect buyer for your house is making their way towards you as you speak, or the perfect house for you to buy is going to be available at the perfect time, and you’re going to find it in the perfect way.

Like all of these kind of woo thoughts that people offer us all the time, why would they offer this? How do we know? We don’t know, but we also don’t know that those things aren’t happening. And the more you choose to get out of the cycle of negativity, the better your life gets. I’m telling you, this is true. It gets better immediately because you feel immediately better, but also we tend to create what we’re focused on and what we’re believing. That is your brain’s job. I say this all the time, but it’s because it’s so powerful for me to remember. Your brain wants to be right more than it wants you to achieve your goals. Your brain wants to be right more than it wants you to feel better. Your brain wants to be right more than it wants you to change your habits or show up better. Your brain’s job is to be right about what you’re believing. And you will contribute to being right about what you’re believing without you even realizing it. Therefore, choose carefully what you’re going to believe.

All right. Let’s go to the third thing I want to offer to you that will help you escape negativity. Now, this one might seem obvious, but I want to give you some caveats, okay? Or some like little follow up tips with this one, which is to choose optimism and positivity at times when you want to. I kind of mentioned this in the beginning, but I do think it’s an important point. It can’t be because you think you should. It can’t be because other people want you to. It has to be because you want to. And I can tell. Sometimes when I’m coaching some of you on the calls, those of you in the lab know this. Sometimes I’m trying to show you your negative thinking, and you pull back on it even stronger. I do the same thing as a client, right?

And so, what I would tell you in that situation is, hey, listen, it doesn’t seem like you want to feel better yet. And that’s okay. Maybe you need some time to process this, to be in negativity, to be in pain. But there will come a time when you’ll want to get out of that. You’ll know because it will be easier to let go of the negative thinking, okay? Now, I don’t usually think of it as choosing positivity or choosing optimism because that can be challenging for me anyway to accept. Maybe you can relate to this. Instead, I think of it as choosing empowerment. Okay? So I don’t want to be disempowered. When I’m in negativity, right, and I’m blaming outside things or I’m judging myself, either way, I’m disempowered.

So empowerment is more like a reconnection with myself. Empowerment is, “Oh, okay. So this thing is going on that isn’t ideal, but you know who can handle things like that? Me. This chick.” You know who’s really good at solving this kind of a problem? Me, apparently, because otherwise I wouldn’t have this thing happening in my life. Or if the judgment that I have is about myself and the negativity is about maybe what I’ve done in my past or what I haven’t done or something like that, then I have to, again, reconnect with myself. And I like to just turn and talk to my past self and go, “It’s okay, girl. I got you. I ain’t mad at you. It’s fine. You know, you dropped the ball in this way or you didn’t do this thing or you did do this thing or whatever. And now I have this challenge to deal with, but I will do that for you. No worries. I got this. I can handle it. You know who can handle that challenge that you created? I can. And I will because I love you.” You see? How we just reconnect with ourself?

So I like to put a lot of trust and faith in myself and trust and faith in a higher power. I call that higher power God. You call it whatever you want to call it. Some people like to think of it as law of attraction bringing things to you. All I know is that when I operate from a place of abundance and trust and love and compassion and grace and peace, then I get more of those things coming into my life. And often I don’t have any idea how those things showed up. I didn’t play any role in it at all. Okay? So it sounds like, “Hey, it’s okay. I can handle this and God’s got me.” Okay? So I’m just going to have faith that we’re going to figure this out. And I’m going to stop feeling sorry for myself. That’s the opposite of empowerment and start going, “Don’t worry, I got this. I got this and God’s got this.”

Fourth and final strategy that I’m going to give you, and this is if you’ve tried all these other things, you are very aware that all problems are thought problems and you’ve tried giving yourself a more useful problem to redirect to, and this just isn’t going away. You’re practicing believing in impossible things, and you’re trying to choose to be empowered and more positive and put faith in yourself and in God, and you still feel like you’re stuck in this cycle of negativity, okay? Then this one’s for you. And it is surrender.

Sometimes we simply have to surrender. Now surrender sounds like a negative word. It sounds like giving up. I don’t mean give up except kind of. Here’s what I mean by surrender. It’s a letting go of your own ideas about what should be so that you can make space for what is and what could be. I want to say that one more time.

To surrender in a useful, empowering, spiritual, even I would say way, is to let go of what you think should be in order to make space for what is and what could be. Because we all have ideas about what should be, about how we should be, about how our family should be, about how our lives should be, about how our home should be, about what our country should look like, our money, our health, whatever else, you name it, we all have ideas and we’re supposed to have ideas. This is not a bad thing, okay? A lot of times you’re going to go create what you want from those ideas. So that’s a beautiful thing.

But if you’re really stuck in a cycle of negativity, sometimes what’s required is simply a surrender to, “Okay, you know what? I don’t know what this should be, apparently. Apparently what I thought my life should be like right now or what I thought my relationship with this person was going to look like or what I thought my money should look like or whatever it is, apparently, that was just made up.” Because it was. It always is just made up. What we think should be is made up in our own minds, okay? And apparently I was wrong about that.

So what do we have here instead? And what could be beautiful about this? And the answer initially might be, “I don’t know, nothing.” Okay. It’s okay if you don’t know if you can’t find anything initially. But can you open up space for like maybe there’s something extraordinary here to be discovered? And I’m just going to open up space for it by letting go of my picture of what should be. That’s what I mean by surrender. And often we don’t get to this point until we’ve been pretty beat down. We try everything else first, and that’s okay. But at some point, when you surrender, sometimes there’s something amazingly beautiful you’ve been missing out on in the midst of where you are now, but certainly of what could come in the future.

Maybe there’s been a job loss and you’re devastated by it and worried about money and not sure how your family’s going to go on. And you’ve tried all these other things and you’ve tried solving for it and you’re feeling stuck and trapped. Can you surrender and go, “Okay, apparently we’re supposed to be going through a time of unemployment here. Apparently there’s a person we need to meet, something we’re going to learn, another adventure we’re going to discover. Like, I don’t know what the thing is, you guys, but you can believe that instead of trying to climb out the window of the room you’re in, if you just sit down and relax in the room and take a look around, there might be a door wide open that you could simply walk out instead. But you’ve been missing it because you’re so busy trying to get out the window.”

So I think in order to execute this surrender step, first of all, I highly recommend a good coach who can help you to do that. But second of all, just try to get to a place of curiosity, okay? And a great step out of negativity and self pity and frustration is just curiosity. But notice the word curiosity is not the same as knowing. If I know something, I might be interested and intrigued by it, but I’m not curious about it because I already know. If I’m curious, it means there’s a lot of unknown. What is this about? Where’s this going?

Curiosity is a really, really, I think, highly underestimated emotion. What’s it that the kids say on Instagram? Underrated, overrated, properly rated. Curiosity is highly underrated because it’s an easy path out of negativity, out of judgment, out of self pity, out of frustration, is just curiosity. But curiosity requires a surrender of what you think is or what you think should be.

All right, my friends. I hope that you will take these strategies and give them a try. I’d love to hear how it goes. Don’t forget, we have a podcast hotline you can call into. It’s 1-877-HIJODYM. That’s Jody with a Y, not Judy. Everyone keeps calling me Judy lately. And it’s fine, I’m not offended, but the number won’t work unless you put in Jody, J O D Y. M is in Moore. 1-877-HIJODYM. Let me know how it goes. Let me know what other questions you have. I’d love to help you. Thanks for joining me today and have a beautiful rest of your week. Bye.

Oh wow, look at that. You made it to the end. Your time and attention is valuable, and I don’t take it lightly that you made it this far. In fact, it tells me you might be like me; insatiably curious about people and life and potential and connection. Maybe you have big dreams but a small budget and no time. You’re tired, but bored. You’re content, but dissatisfied. Sound familiar? Come to a free coaching call and see for yourself what’s possible: JodyMoore.com/freecoaching to register. That’s JodyMoore.com/freecoaching.