I will ask crowds this which do you think is more important more positive thinking or less negative thinking and I say this is not a trick question and I'll let them wrestle with that for a little bit and for the group that we're talking to today it's a very provocative question which is more important where do you get the most mileage more positive thinking or less negative thinking and the studies are unequal IAL it's less negative thinking now you the the thing that gets us tangled up is that I guess pretty much all of us
think of it as okay you've got this linear scale here you know and we'll say at the highend the good end is optimism and it the low end is pessimism negative thinking well studies show that they're actually two different scales really and this is just fascinating to me um you should positive thinking is important and keep it up keep it high but if you want to get your real knowledge just cut down on the negative thinking cut it down cut it down cut it down that's the villain voice that's the critic in your head that's
the demotivator that's the Discounter that's the one that raises the doubts and you can shut it up it takes practice it takes some discipline but people say well I think I'm aware of my negative thinking but they're not about 70% of our negative thinking goes un perceived by us we it is so embedded in our day-to-day Behavior we're not even aware of it we're not even aware of it about 70% it is so much just ingrained in the way we go about living it's habitual thinking yes and so let me show you how tell you
how it shows up I talk about the five C's okay okay the sneak attack of the five C's okay the first one is complaining grapping grapping grapping you know it's too hot in Dallas it is but that's not going to change if I GP about it okay so the first one is complaining the next one's criticizing well the grid went down today in Texas we had brown outs my air conditioners you know and there's always someone to criticize so we've got complaining we got criticizing next one is concern and I'm not talking about being empathic
here and having concern for some other person I'm talking about Garden variety worrying I'm concerned about this well I'm concerned about inflation well I'm concerned about you know the news all right the next one is commiserating commiserating we come in and I sat down with this person and they start their Seas their SE complaining and I say I get it man yeah I understand I'm not doing anybody any good when I start commiserating I'm not doing anyone any good it's it's um it's destructive to both of us and then the last one is catastrophizing which
is just when you're really down you just blow things all out of proportion you know but those things sneak in if you start watching people watching ourselves unless we do this and of course we're we're surrounded by so much negativity you know you you go you listen to the news you get on social media and oh no no no no so we got to learn how to cut out the negative thinking versus adding more positive thinking because you can keep adding positive thinking but if you've got dirty water in the water it's still going to
be dirty so you got to remove the the the dirty the challenging thoughts to have more Pure Energy cleaner energy that can make you more effective more efficient yeah yeah now here's what's interesting so we we're talking about making a Quantum Leap we're talking about change and really if you said what what are you all about price what you know your life what where did you point yourself well I wish I just got caught up in positioning people to do more with themselves there's so much out there and people have so much potential to do
things with themselves uh let's arm them let's let's position them to do what they can do with themselves you said there was two different scales one is about optimism and pessimism essentially right is that the two different yeah sides of the spectrum and you're saying that if we want to increase our confidence if we want to increase our belief himself one of the things that we can do is start removing uh pessimism negative thoughts negative thinking from our life but a lot of people might say well price that's great and all but that just sounds
a little too woo wooy that sounds a little too fluffy for me just be more positive think more positively is that really going to help me create more Quantum leaps um and shouldn't I have some you know critical thinking and really you know question and doubt things or is that just being you know am I being too negative if I do that okay when we when someone decides they want to make a Quantum lead they're talking about major change and let's talk about what happens when change hits in this case self-imposed change now I've seen
this for decades in organizations where it's major change you're being acquired you're being merged you're being downsized you're being restructured okay and so it's self-imposed when we're making Quantum Leap but the same Dynamics come into play as when the world our world the company we work for or whatever the organization that we're stuck in all of a sudden goes takes a hard right turn so here's what happens when change hits the first scan is for danger that's how we're wired danger whenever there's change it feels like there's danger yeah what could go wrong here how
could I get hurt in this deal um what's going to happen to me and all of these me issues come into mind so who was it John Dryden it said self-defense is Nature's oldest law and so our defense mechanisms come into play but when change hits whether it's imposed on us or self-imposed the first thing that happens is okay things are changing and the F the future gets a little blurry so we got a new dose of ambiguity and uncertainty okay and people very greatly in their tolerance for ambiguity uh the second thing that happens
is the trust level drops in an organization you're going to change yourself make Quantum Leap the trust level in yourself drops too the villain voice goes crazy with that um so we got the ambiguity and uncertainty the drop in self- trust and then self-preservation takes over as a driver of behavior it does in an organization it does in you as an individual when you start to make a Quantum lead okay and so we're in the negative zone now it's all negative it's all negative energy it's concern it's a concern concern concern and we may be
grapping we may be criticizing complaining all of this kind of commiserating with the people around us um and so it's hard to create a Quantum Leap in that space it is but it what is so important is for people to know what's coming people don't tell them I think this is one of the things that is a little bit of a problem with a lot of the self-improvement books go do this do magnificent things but by the way in route let's not talk about that but you should because if you will tell people what's coming
it does so much to re to equip them to to deal with it they know what's happening
