One of my favorite quotes and I think it was Tony Robbins where I first heard this is so relevant when it comes to the idea of controlling our focus Controlling our focus to influence our outcomes the idea of positive thinking of controlling our energy and where it [00:01:00] flows to The quote is this see things as they are Not worse than they are and I want to take a step back and just break down that quote just for a second See things as they are, but not worse than they are.

This is truly insightful in the sense that we are going to face challenges in life. We are going to have to overcome obstacles and at times we are going to suffer. 

Suffering is an unavoidable reality in our lives. We're not trying to avoid suffering entirely. Our goal in living a positive human experience is to minimize unnecessary suffering and use the necessary suffering that we encounter for good to further our purpose, but we're never going to fully avoid suffering. And so the idea of just being positive all the time. It can sound very counterintuitive, acknowledging that we're going to [00:02:00] suffer, being positive all the time, and being a human being with a wide range of emotions that we're constantly having to control.

It can be a bit overwhelming. 

In fact, I personally believe that at times we try so hard to avoid suffering that we rob ourselves of the positive outcomes that those states can bring us.

We rob ourselves of the positive actions that we would take as a result of that suffering.

Suffering can be incredibly beneficial to us because we don't enjoy it. And when we don't enjoy something and we train our nervous system to, Take positive action to get out of that state of suffering. That's where real magic happens. That's how we start to inch further towards being the version of ourselves that we'd like to become.

But if we're constantly just trying to avoid suffering at all costs, we can actually fall victim to something called toxic positivity.

This idea of toxic positivity was really popularized in the last few years by a wonderful therapist named Whitney Goodman. If you have [00:03:00] not read her book, Toxic Positivity, I highly recommend it.

But the gist of it is this We live in a society that prioritizes positive thinking as a mask for real solutions to our suffering. When we are constantly told to look on the bright side, focus on the positive, have good vibes only, we are actually robbing ourselves of the utility of meaningful suffering that will inspire meaningful action.

Coming from a place of unbridled positivity all the time actually invalidates some of our genuine and meaningful emotions.

It could also inspire inaction, meaningful inaction, like avoiding difficult conversations that we know we need to have. It can cause a lot of denial, shame, disconnection.

Blind positivity and optimism are not the same thing. I can be optimistic while allowing myself to experience suffering. I can acknowledge that my suffering [00:04:00] has purpose. I can be optimistic that I'm going to use that suffering to ask myself the right questions to inspire positive action.

But if I just band aid over every one of my difficult life experiences with uninhibited positivity, I'm really denying objective reality. And the difference between objective reality and my subjective reality is my perspective on things.

And when my perspective is that everything's always fine, I'm just going to slam through this mountain of suffering with inauthentic positivity. I robbed myself of the suffering that is necessary to take meaningful action.

Have you ever met someone whose default answer to everything is that it's fine. It's fine. I'm fine. That is someone that is suffering from toxic positivity. They are deliberately avoiding feeling the emotions that come with the suffering that they need to feel to take the meaningful actions in their lives [00:05:00] to influence the outcomes that they want. When you're constantly coming from a place of everything's fine because you're not allowing yourself to suffer, you're band aiding over

With positivity, then you're also not allowing yourself to experience that suffering, you're robbing yourself of the upside of experiencing that suffering.

and taking meaningful action to create an outstanding future. You're staying in this world of fine with a toxic level of positivity that is robbing you of moving forward.

One of the reasons that we fall victim to this artificial, toxic positivity at times is because we're so fearful of the negative consequences of the suffering that we don't want to experience because we overblow that in our heads as well.

We live on an emotional spectrum and we're avoiding trying to get to the absolute far left side of that spectrum where our suffering is incredibly great. It's unbearable. It's so painful to [00:06:00] experience that level of suffering, the level of suffering that we're building up in our heads.

If we really allow ourselves to acknowledge the things that are not right in our world, when we really allow ourselves to experience everything that's causing us pain,

we're afraid that it will take us all the way to the left side of the spectrum where the pain is incredible. And so we mask over it with this positivity that just artificially brings us back to center. It's really not positivity, it's avoidance. We're avoiding experiencing what we fear is going to be a great level of suffering.

And the truth is, we're almost always falling victim to the state of toxic positivity because we're over blowing the genuine nature of that suffering. 

We almost always. Always multiply the level of suffering we anticipate to feel in our minds. Our brains do a very poor job of Accurately calculating fear and suffering we tend to think worst case scenario by [00:07:00] default and then tend to put mechanisms like positivity in place to avoid ever having to experience that magnitude of suffering when the reality is we most likely would have never experienced that magnitude of suffering at all. about this practically in the real world? What are some things that people are genuinely afraid of that really have no basis in reality? Needles is probably the best example I can think of. There are a lot of people out there that will literally faint. when they have the sight of a needle getting too close to their skin.

There's literally nothing that needle is going to do that's going to hurt them. There's probably an expert nurse there that's just drawing blood or giving them an IV or whatever it is. They're going to feel one tiny little pinch of pain. And then it's going to be completely over and people will literally have a neurological reaction where they pass out unconscious because they are so afraid of the consequences of that needle pinching their skin.

That is a legitimate [00:08:00] neurological reaction to an overblown fear. Now that's a little bit of an extreme example, I suppose, but not really. We tend to overblow our fears in almost every aspect of our lives. When we go and start a new business, for example, we're so afraid.

The thing that doesn't get us off the ground for so long is we're afraid of losing everything. This is like the number one fear for new entrepreneurs in my world that I'm blessed to talk to all the time is that they're afraid of going broke. They're afraid that their idea wasn't good enough or that they're not smart enough to run a business.

They're not credible enough. Everybody's going to laugh at them. And then at the end of the day, they're afraid that the outcome of all of that. Is that they're going to go broke, that they're going to be homeless, living under a bridge, their family will have abandoned them. Like no one will talk to them.

Like it is the craziest thing to see some of these entrepreneurs go to a very, very extreme place rather than the reality, which is if I'm starting a new business I've either saved up some money Doing something that is probably repeatable that I could go make [00:09:00] that money again If I failed or i'm getting a loan of some sort that's going to come with a monthly payment And at the end of the day the worst case scenario is that my business doesn't work out And I lose the money that I had saved up.

So I have to go back to do whatever I did to make it in the first place, which I've already done. So it should be palatable or even easier this time. Or I have to find a new way to go and make the monthly payment on the business loan that I still have, which probably involves the same activities that I was doing before I started my business.

I've got to go to work. I've got to go get a job for a little while. I might even have to go do something that wouldn't be my preference. But I'm put in a position now because the business idea that I had didn't quite work out, but I also am sure that I learned a lot along the way. And now I have valuable experience to go apply to my next opportunity.

That's really the worst case scenario, not living under a bridge for the most part. and that's not to avoid acknowledging that poverty and things like that truly exist. They do. That's just not how most people end [00:10:00] up there.

We make a regular habit of viewing things through the most negative lens that we possibly can by default as a fear response. And it causes inaction. 

And then the result of that inaction is a low level suffering that builds up and buzzes over time. It's the suffering caused by long term inaction. Us just accepting the way that life is accepting that things are how they are. And our only solution is to tell ourselves that they're better. That's where the idea of toxic positivity comes into play.

Toxic positivity keeps us from feeling the suffering that is necessary for us to make a change. I am all for positivity and the power of positive thinking. I think it's one of the truest blessings that we have human beings have access to the ability to control our perspective.

around any series of events Is a massive [00:11:00] superpower that every single one of us possesses. But that's often not what we do. We use our ability to perceive reality based on our own focus and our own perspective.

to think about the most extremely negative outcomes that we possibly can.

We do a poor job of gathering objective facts. We do a poor job of considering possibility versus probability. The possibility that something extremely negative will happen versus the probability of that event actually happening. If we truly looked at our reactions to things that keep us in a state of inactivity or a state of fear or negativity because we're afraid of the consequences.

It's not like we're doing the math in our head and really realizing what the probability of those negative outcomes is. We're just freezing. We're just band aiding. We're just avoiding that suffering by never taking that chance.

There's an extreme example of this called catastrophizing. Catastrophizing is something that people with [00:12:00] extreme bouts of anxiety tend to do. Their nervous system gets so frozen with the fear of the most negative outcome that it can possibly imagine. And it will completely paralyze a person at times.

It's what causes panic attacks which manifest themselves in many different ways. 

This idea of catastrophizing focusing solely on the worst outcomes is one of the things that we're trying to avoid with this idea of toxic positivity. For positivity to be unhelpful.

All it needs to do is mask useful suffering and for suffering to be useful, we need to keep it in the right lens. We need to experience the right amount of suffering, but not more suffering than is useful. I'll call Back the quote from the beginning of the episode.

See things as they are, but not worse than they are. 

This is one of the most useful things that we can keep with us as a tool at all times.

Is the ability to ask ourselves, am I seeing things as they are? Or am I [00:13:00] seeing them worse than they are? Am I allowing my mind to assume the worst scenario, the worst outcome, although probably improbable? I allowing my body, my energy to be shut down Because I'm so fearful of this outcome that may never come. Or am I stepping back, allowing myself to experience the requisite level of suffering that comes along with this subjective reality, and using it to make effective decisions, asking myself relevant questions, and taking meaningful action?

When we get out of the habit of catastrophizing and seeing just the ultimately scariest outcomes and then band aiding over things with artificial positivity, we allow ourselves to see objective reality and make effective decisions based on the outcomes that we're trying to achieve.

It allows us the clarity to take effective action, to experience that little bit of suffering that inspires forward motion, that inspires change, that [00:14:00] inspires us to direct our energy into the truly positive places that will have a meaningful impact.

It also allows us to prepare for challenges way ahead of time without denying them. When I'm constantly coming from a place of everything's fine, everything's fine, it's really difficult for me to see the road in front of me.

When I am aware and realistic about the challenges ahead, them, and I'm not just saying everything's going to be fine, I can start to make effective decisions ahead of time to navigate all of the variables that lie in front of me.

So I want you to start to navigate this throughout your day. I want you to do a couple of things. First, I want you to listen to yourself the next time that you say that something is fine. And I want you to just take a step back and you may truly mean it in that moment, but I have a hunch that every once in a while, if you catch yourself saying that you're fine or things are fine, you may be band aiding over a difficult situation.

Because you're too fearful of experiencing what you are thinking is more suffering than you're going [00:15:00] to and it's stopping you from taking meaningful action. And so you're accepting the state of fine as a workaround for experiencing suffering that could inspire true change.

And then I want you to get in the habit of asking yourself during challenging times, am I seeing things as they are or am I seeing them as worse than they are? That is a very powerful question that when we get in the habit of asking ourselves, we'll realize that so much of our suffering is man made up here.

It goes far beyond the requisite level of suffering that we need to experience to inspire effective action and inspire decision making. We tend to overblow our bout of suffering, thinking about the worst case scenario that things will continue to get worse and worse and worse. Just take a step back.

Count to three and ask yourself, am I seeing things as they are, or am I seeing things as worse than they are? I think you'll be amazed how that can bring just about any situation into a [00:16:00] clearer perspective for you.

Let me know how these tools are working in your life. Drop a comment below, get in touch with me. I truly appreciate you listening to this episode and I look forward to talking soon.