Although it may seem like it, today’s positivity quote was not influenced by Taylor Swift… Too much.

Living a positive life is equally about finding productive ways to work through the negative as it is creating more positive. With that in mind, today’s positivity quote is “Shake if off”.

When someone dumps their negative energy on you, shake it off. When you tried something that didn’t go as well as you’d expected, shake it off. When start doubting yourself and take a hit to your self-esteem, shake it off. It’s a very physical expression but it serves an emotional purpose. 

The expression tells you to literally move your body so that you can displace the emotional energy you’re feeling that doesn’t belong, and it suggests that there’s a quick fix to it too. Just a quick maneuver is all it takes to remove  whatever it is that’s causing you to feel a certain way so that you can return to the way you were feeling before it.

“Shaking it off” is a skill and those who can do it quickly and effectively can move forward faster than other people. But oddly, the alternative of “keeping it on” can be more comfortable. It feels good to make excuses, feel bad for ourselves, and complain. It’s easier than doing something about it. But it doesn’t serve you and your pursuit toward your best self.

So when it comes time to ‘shake it off’, here are a few ways to do it. The first is to change your physiology. Instead of stewing in bad news you can choose to get moving, go for a walk, reorient your emotions and come back to a rational mind. Another thing you can do is introspect. Feel into the root of the emotion, learn about what might be causing it, and find ways to soothe the source that is causing the negative emotional response to surface.

Keep in mind, this works for emotional experiences that are quick onset and distracting. This is not a recommendation to push away your feelings but rather a way of handling emotions in the moment so that you can do deeper work later if it’s required. It’s best used in times when you need to restore your previous energy quickly because your life demands it. If there’s more to the emotion you were experiencing, it’s very important to honor it and explore it in an environment that is more appropriate.

In sports, you shake off a bad play so that you can quickly refocus on the next. At work you shake off rejection so that you can get back to work to get your next win. In relationships you shake off a poorly timed slight that didn’t sit well with you.

Our emotions serve a very important purpose, but they also can lead to poor decision making and prolonged dissatisfaction. It serves us to find ways to control our emotions, and one of those ways is to shake them off.

Picture this example with me for a second. Let’s say that you got in a big fight with a family member, and it was your fault. Maybe it involved a miscommunication where you let someone down and got defensive about it, leading to a major disagreement. After all, we are human and not perfect, these things certainly happen. 

In your own head, you might get really critical. You get upset with yourself that you didn’t have more emotional control. You deride yourself for not having more empathy and questioning if you have the capacity to care for others. You go down really negative spirals of thought patterns that all point to how awful of a person you are.

Now let’s look at this example from a slightly different angle. Instead of you being the person involved in the fight that made a few mistakes, you’re a good friend of that person. After they tell you about the event and the circumstances around it, what would you say to them?

It wouldn’t have anything to do with how awful of a person they are… It’d be much more encouraging and supportive. You’d remind them that this happened only one time and in the long run it’s not a big deal. You’d highlight their best qualities and how this was all an isolated incident. 

Now here’s the important question, and the point I’m trying to make with all of this - What if you treated yourself like you are your own friend more often? Giving yourself grace and seeing in yourself all of the things that everyone else sees in you.

We are so quick to find the goodness and humanity in others and the flaws within ourselves. But if we started to take a more third-party approach to the way we relate with the things we’re going through in our own lives, we’ll be able to support ourselves in ways that help us be at our very best.

I was talking to one of my coaches about this recently and he asked “What would Brian the coach say to Brian the client right now?” This simple question invoked this very process and it helped me reframe feelings of disappointment into something more constructive, reminding me that I should be proud of the way I’m doing my best and at peace with the fact that I can’t influence the things that are out of my control.

So the next time you catch yourself criticizing or going through self-deprecating thoughts, ask yourself this question - “What would I tell myself if I were my own friend?”

Sometimes you’re so deep in the woods that you can’t see the trees, and this just might pull you far enough out of your own life to see it.

Let me preface this whole topic by first sharing that I am as strong proponent for hard work. I believe that applying ourselves in something we care about is a key ingredient to a fulfilled and purposeful life. Having said that, I’m beginning to explore some of the beliefs I have around the right ways to think about working hard.

First is the driving force behind working hard. For many of us ‘hard work’ has been instilled as a core value that corresponds with our character. Almost as if we want to be viewed as a contributing member of society, we need to have a good work ethic. The alternative of being lazy is associated with being wasteful and serves as a negative strike against who we are as a person. That someone who's lazy is just looking for handouts.

But what if, instead of labeling someone who doesn’t work hard as lazy, we choose to believe that they just haven’t found something they’re so passionate about that they want to work hard. That there’s nothing wrong with their character and that it’s more a matter of they environment they’re in. It would completely shift the way we treat and relate with the people in our life that aren’t working hard.

And second, many of us have a belief around hard work that is making our work harder than it needs to be. We’ve been taught for many years to conflate hard work with getting strong results. But what if that didn’t need to be the case? What if we looked for more ways for our results to come more effortlessly and in flow rather than from a big push to create them? 

We’re often blind to these opportunities because our minds are more comfortable believing that results are directly proportionate with the amount work we put it. But when we build systems and processes to automate things, when we double down on what’s working best and simplify our activity, we can get better results with less effort. Again, perhaps our relationship with hard work is causing us to miss the easy street right in front of us and go down roads that are more challenging.

Regardless of what you took from this, it’s always important to questions your beliefs. Our beliefs exist within our subconscious mind and dictate the direction of our thinking. In making the unconscious force of your beliefs more conscious, you may find ways to pursue your ultimate life that much more effectively.

Something that has played a huge role in my life, and I know I’m not the only one, is a strong desire to get the approval of others. At times this can take a genuine form where you feel inspired to do right by those you care about and make them proud, but at other times it can take on a destructive form that steers you out of alignment in your life.

It’s perfectly fine to care what others think about you. In fact it’s hardwired into our evolutionary past to be altruistic and consider how we contribute within a larger tribe. This is what makes humans so powerful as a species. It generates a pull to seek the approval of others and in doing so, we become very extrinsically motivated. All this means is that we find reasons for doing things from sources that are outside of ourselves.

Extrinsic motivation itself isn’t a bad thing, but there are a few applications of it that lead to us getting our needs met in unhealthy ways. For example, someone who lacks a sense of self-love may seek the validation of other people to meet that needs, which may pull them to behave in ways that aren’t representative of who they are.

Or someone who lacks confidence might ask a friend or loved one for permission to make a certain decision, opening up the possibility that they’ll be steered away from doing what they really want to do.

Sometimes it’s easier to get your needs met in these superficial ways. The validation is more readily accessible. But over time, this may create a dependency on something outside of yourself to get your internal needs met.

This, in a sense, can be considered an addiction to approval, and the cost of it is significant. It can lead to you be less definitive about pursuing what you want in life. It may slow you down and keep you stuck in the same old things. And it may force you to be okay tolerating things in your life that aren’t the best fit for you.

It becomes a difficult balance to strike, so here are some of my recommendations:

Seek perspective over approval as it will help you make the right decisions for yourself.

Understand that most mistakes can be corrected, so as long as you stay open to feedback you’ll get there.

And when people try to impose their own expectations and preferences on you, remember that they have different goals, experiences, and worldviews than you and that’s a beautiful thing.

At the end of the day everyone want you to be the best you that you can be, and superficially seeking the approval of others in everything you do will hold you back from it.

Do you know that person who always seems to find a way to interject in conversation, dropping in an extra tidbit or humblebrag or namedrop? Without trying to place judgment on them or criticize those who do it, because I’m guilty of it too, let’s think about how this might apply and what we have to learn from it.

Speaking from my own experience, sometimes I find myself trying to add into a conversation just to try and sound smart. Especially if it’s in a social environment where I feel like I’m out of my league or have something to prove, I want to make it clear that I belong and can keep up with the conversation.

Being self-aware, I know some of the things motivating this behavior. It’s feeling like I’m not good enough or not successful enough. It’s trying to sound impressive so that I can get external validation from someone else to appease my ego. It’s putting that extra sugar coat on top of who I am because I don’t have the confidence to own who I am and expose myself to rejection.

Those all sound like negative things, but it’s perfectly normal and common! What I just shared about is something that many people go through, maybe even you, which is why I wanted to add some perspective to it and suggest some ways of relating with it.

So instead of coming off as a know it all, with a fragile facade, we can approach these moments more authentically. When you have something to add, put it through a quick filter to determine if it’s actually adding to the conversation or if you’re saying it for your own reasons. If it’s the latter, you’ve just discovered an opportunity to learn more about yourself and the root of an insecurity or limiting belief you might have.

Having said that, there are strategic times to demonstrate your knowledge. Especially if you’re trying to make things happen and you want to generate some credibility, it may be appropriate to say something that puts you in a positive light. 

But again, it’s being self-aware of the intention behind it. We all need to hustle, I get that. So if there’s a real purpose behind it then go and do your thing. But if you’re flexing your knowledge to fill a hole inside you, being a know it all will feel good in the short term but do more damage in the long term, separating you from your self-belief. 

My intention today is not to be a part of any ‘toxic positivity’ messaging, but rather demonstrate how we can create more positive lives while still remaining authentic to how we’re feeling. It's a fine line that deserves exploration.

And the way we'll do that is in this quote - “Optimism is a choice.” 

Our reality is created by our perspective, which serves as a filter to understanding the world around us. This means that everything we perceive is just a representation of the meaning that we took from it, which comes from years of biases, prejudices, beliefs, and experience. In every moment all of this history creates an unconscious filter we see the world through, and we’ll continue to see the world through this filter unless we change it, good or bad.

The issue with toxic positivity is that sometimes, we try to change this filter in inauthentic ways. We try to force ourselves to see the world that doesn’t feel true to ourselves. The rejection of the truth can cause us to neglect the real emotions that come up as part of life - anger, disappointment, sadness, fear, worry - which leads to them going unaddressed, unprocessed, and unhealed.

Tying this into one of Simon Sinek’s take core philosophies, he has a clever differentiation between positivity and optimism. He says positivity is seeing that everything is good in the present moment, and optimism is a belief that things will be good in the future. 

This nuance is important because it suggests that you don’t need to be positive to be optimistic. You can be deep in anger, disappointment, or sadness and still be optimistic that someday soon it won’t be that way. Optimism gives hope.

So bringing it back to the quote “Optimism is a choice”. It allows you to be authentic about the way you feel in the moment while at the same time shaping your filter for how you want things to be.  

The future is uncertain and incomplete. There’s no authentic way to represent the future because it hasn’t happened yet. So you can choose to see that things will get better and are always getting better. It’s no more or less true than any other alternative, so why not choose the one that supports you the most? 

The cool part about it is that when you do, you’ll start feeling the encouragement and inspiration you need to take action in ways that makes it much more likely to be so. That’s within your power, and it’ll change your life when you harness it.

That’s what we mean by positivity. It’s doing the things that support you in relating with your life more positively and in authentic ways.

This is a heavier topic, and in no way am I an expert in this but I think it’s a valuable thing to think about and I appreciate you holding space for it. 

Unfortunately, a lot of us are self-deprecating. We point out all of the flaws we have, the mistakes we’ve made, and the wrongdoings we’ve been a part of. It gets to the point where we relate these things with our character and who we are at our core. It might even make you believe that there’s something wrong with you because no matter what you do, there's something that just keeps getting in the way.

That's a really deflating thought. It can make us question if we’re capable of our hopes and dreams, if we can impact the world in the way that we want to, or if we’re wasting our time focusing on things that will never work.

Whether we’re experiencing something like this right now, or we can relate to a time when we’ve all been there, it takes a number of different forms. It could be within your mental health and how you sometimes go to dark places. What’s wrong with you that’s keeping you from being happy and enjoying what you have? 

Or maybe you just can’t get your health where you want it, lacking consistency within your diet and exercise. What’s wrong with you that’s keeping you from being more self-disciplined?

This is where I want to inject a transformational suggestion. Maybe it’s not that there’s something wrong with you, but rather that there’s something wrong within you.

Read that again.

Maybe it’s not that there’s something wrong with you, but rather that there’s something wrong within you.

It’s not that you can’t be happy or find joy, it’s that there’s something happening within you that is preventing you from it. Or with your health, it’s not that you’re not capable of doing what it takes to get healthy, it’s that there are other factors influencing your experience of it. Things like physiology and brain chemistry, beliefs, or past trauma.

If this is the case, then a weight has been lifted. There’s nothing wrong with you. Your character, your integrity, your potential is all intact. Now you can go fix the other things going on that are keeping you from being who you want to be. That’s the work. It’s not easy, but at least it presents a path forward.

A thought from Nithya Shanti - “Give and forgive not get and forget”.

Clearly, there’s a strong and clever contrast painted in this. It makes you reflect on the difference between giving and getting, which we’ve thought more about, and then expand that into a more unique contrast between forgiving and forgetting.

First, to establish that foundation, the world operates through the transaction of giving and getting. You cannot give your money, expertise, contacts, energy, or anything in any capacity unless it in some way is being received somewhere else. 

Within this contrast, understand that ‘getting’ is not a bad thing itself. It’s very important actually because it allows someone else to give and also it allows us to get our needs met so that we have more to give. The encouragement is to focus on the priority, which is giving, because when you give you then grant yourself more permission to receive and facilitate the flow of value.

What’s interesting about this is most exchanges involve both parties giving and getting all at the same time. For example someone buying groceries: The grocer is giving food and getting money for it, while the customer is giving money and getting food. They’re inseparable.

Now this second piece, the contrast between forgiving and forgetting. When you forgive, there's a record of what happened. It is not being avoided, neglected, or lost. The facts remain the same but the perception of it has changed. You choose to accept what happened and tell a new story about it, one of forgiveness, gratitude, empathy, and understanding.

When you forget, what happened is gone. It means that you’re susceptible to it happening again because you didn’t process it, you simply deleted it. This allows the same old story and meaning to be tied to it, keeping you right where you are.

As you can tell, there’s a lot to think about in this concept - Give and forgive not get and forget. And I’d love for you to reflect on it and figure out for yourself why it’s true, or not!

I heard a really interesting framework around how to limit negative communication. Often times we say things we don’t mean, that we’ll later regret, and wonder why we even said it in the first place. We wonder what caused us to not have the self-control required to show up better in the moment.

When it comes to things you wish you wouldn’t have said, or said in a certain way, it’s usually a matter of feeling emotional. Our emotions bias our logical reasoning as an environment that shapes our thoughts. It happens unconsciously in emotional moments causing us to misrepresent our truth.

So before you communicate, especially when you’re feeling impulsive, halt. Pause. Take a minute to audit how you’re feeling. In particular reflect on these 4 things:

HALT is an acronym - Hungry, angry, lonely, tired. When you’re feeling any of those things you’re more likely to make mistakes in your communication. When you feel any of these ways, you become more likely to say something you didn’t mean because your mind is fixated on addressing specific needs in the short-term that conflict with what might be best in the long term.

This is in my mind humanity’s fatal flaw - We have evolved to do the things that serve us in the short term (immediate gratification) but that often does more harm than good in the long term (rejection of delayed gratification). 

But once you can label what’s happening, understand that in the moment you’re feeling hungry, angry, lonely, or tired, you can decrease this unconscious force. Simply by calling it out, you give your logical mind the information it needs to make the right decision, knowing how certain factors and feelings might be motivating things in certain ways.

Bringing this back to you - The next you time you feel agitated or like you’re getting impulsive or confrontational in a conversation, halt. Pause to reflect on how hungry, angry, lonely, or tired you might be. Connect the dots around how that might be causing you to relate with things a certain way. And if you feel like it’s not allowing you to represent your best self, now you know and you can choose to do something different.