Ep104_Positive
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Adam Gragg: [00:00:00] So I was driving home from work today and I saw this pond behind the apartment complex that I live in. I've lived here for over, I lived there for over six years and I remembered my daughter and I, almost six years ago, soon after we moved into the apartment, standing on this ice on this pond and walking on it with my dog.
I have video of it. It was a great memory. Sometimes on my phone, these memories images will pop up on Apple and I'll get sad because I'll see my daughter when she was a little girl or I'll see my mom and dad when they were younger. I'll see my friends doing something fun but then also I can get really, really excited because it can turn into making the most of the future that I do have because I'm excited about creating more.
Memories. Today, I'm going to talk to you about building positive experiences into your life. This is episode number 104 of the Decide Your Legacy podcast. And as I do every time, if you like this podcast, do me a favor, give it a rating and review on Apple, Spotify, wherever you get your [00:01:00] podcast content that helps it grow and reach more people.
I'm Adam Gragg. I'm your host. I've been a coach, a content creator, a speaker, and a licensed mental health professional for 25 years. My passion is helping other people find the self confidence and clarity needed to face their fears and live their legacy. I talk about stuff I struggle with myself. I don't have it all figured out.
I'm a fellow traveler. Just like my clients. I want to share something uncomfortable that I did recently. I do this every episode because nothing I've found is more important to your mental health than facing your fears. And nothing is more damaging to your mental health than playing it safe. Me and my daughter pulled a prank on my family at Christmas.
Yes, I did it again. We told them we were coming in late. We were going to have to stay in a hotel in Sacramento. We're going to go over to their, my parents house in the morning and not wake everybody up. But sure enough, our flight landed at 5 PM while everybody was watching. a movie and we came around in the backyard and surprised [00:02:00] everybody and it was a blast for me.
And I think everyone made some memories. I did film it. This is the podcast that you do not just listen to. My listeners get uncomfortable too. So what I want you to think about right now is a great experience that you had over the last year because you said yes. To doing something new or challenging or different, or because you said yes to engaging in relationships in some way, I want you to write that down somewhere, speak it into your phone, and then I want you to focus on something that you missed out on because you said no.
Maybe you needed to say no, but if you look back and you say, I could have said yes in that situation and I missed out on some kind of experience. Maybe my friends invited me to go on a golf trip and I said no. from high school or from college. Maybe somebody has asked me to go and grab a cup of coffee.
And I said, no, because I was ashamed or embarrassed. I didn't want to talk about my past, or I didn't feel, I felt inferior. What did you miss out on? Those are the experiences we do not want to miss out on that can change our life when we say yes. Here's what you want to do. I have seven things, seven actions you can [00:03:00] take to build positive experiences into your life this year and any year.
So number one is create an experience mindset. Take some time to reflect on what went well experientially in your life over the last year, over the last five years with specific people, with people that you are very close to and love. Think about those experiences. Make a list. I made a list recently of some of the things that have gone well over the last year.
So I have a new employee. I have a new office. I have a new part time employee as well. I have new clients that I'm grateful for. I have new experiences with my parents and my siblings. I have new experiences with friends. I have things that haven't gone well, but I could intentionally focus on the experiences that have gone well and make those a part of my mindset.
Our mindset is something we have a tremendous amount of influence over. We don't have total control over, but we have influence over it. When you can recognize that something is coming into your mind, that's maybe not a very positive, encouraging thought, you don't have to dwell on it. You can let it go.
You can recognize it as not being you. So I texted my friend today because not just [00:04:00] good experiences in the past can become great, positive memories. Bad experiences can be positive memories as well. So I texted a friend, a buddy about. This memory that I had over from over 20 years ago when we got back from a track meet at K State, where he ran track and this drunk lady crawled in the back of my car right when I pulled up to the duplex I was living in with him.
I was living with a bunch of single guys at that time and I flipped out. I got her out of the car really quickly. Let's just say okay And we were laughing about it because I didn't want some drunk person telling me where to drive them in my car It was a very interesting experience. It happened so quickly That to this day, I mean, I don't even know how she got the door open I mean, it was like we were getting out of this car and she crawled in It wanted a ride somewhere, but she was hammered I mean, I'm telling you so I saw an image of that car because it was the same car that got two of the wheels stolen in the middle of the night. Yeah, not the best neighborhood. So, what are the memories that you have? I want you right now to think about, and this is an action you [00:05:00] can take, to start building this experience mindset, okay? Because experiences are the most value, they're the most valuable assets we have, are these experiences, these memories that we have, because we can build more.
It inspires us to make more, no matter what our age. No matter what mistakes we've made, we can continue to build positive experiences into our lives. That's the stuff that we value the most. When you look back on your life, you're gonna remember what you did and what you and you're gonna regret what you didn't do.
We're talking about good stuff here. 'cause you're gonna have inspiration and say, I want to do that, and you're not gonna do it and you're gonna regret it when you're older. Don't be like that. Don't live that kind of. Life now so that you're going to regret later. So what are some positive experiences you've had with family and friends?
Take the time to journal about that. You won't remember these things unless you intentionally put energy into them. You'll remember some of them, but a lot of them will just kind of fly by the wayside because you're not putting time into reflecting on that. So number two, picture what you [00:06:00] want. So start with a picture of what you want in your mind.
What do you want in your marriage? What do you want with your friends? What do you want socially? What do you want financially? What kind of experiences do you want in your life? Experiences meaning, how are you going to earn the money to have the lifestyle that you want? Those are the things you can picture in your mind.
Making those professional connections, taking those risks, pictured in your mind. So I had this picture on a vision board in my basement, in my old house. of an RV adventure. It was an RV, a really cool RV, and it was kids playing in a stream with the RV in the background. And I looked at that for probably three years.
And sure enough, I lived out that picture with my daughter. We took a 10 day, 12 day RV adventure throughout Colorado in the summer of 2000. And I'll never forget that because my dog Max was with us too. And we went and saw friends, Dave, Melissa. Ben, Joe, Rachel, my cousins in Colorado Springs. It was a blast.
We stayed in campsites. I will never forget that [00:07:00] experience and I remember not wanting to do it until the last minute. I tried to cancel that trip and I was one day late. to cancel and get a full refund. So I went on that trip. That's what my mindset was. I mean, my mindset can shift from, you know, the loss and the things and experiences I'm not going to have that are in the past.
And then all of a sudden to the experiences that are positive, potentially in the future, if I intentionally live the life God has planned for me and I can choose to have that mindset. So we picture what we want. Some of my goals for 2024. I'm just going to go ahead and share these with you. So getting some extra time with some family of mine.
I'm not going to say their names because they probably listen to this podcast, but getting some extra time, just one on one time to make some memories. I'm going to plan that into my schedule this year. So going on another skydive this year, or maybe two this year, maybe with some friends this year. So that is a great experience.
It's A scary experience, but it's also a wonderful one. I have so many great [00:08:00] memories talking to my buddy Alan when we did our first skydive. I mean, and we talk about it to this day. We've talked about doing one over Yosemite, because you can do that, believe it or not. So I want to have some great experiences with my daughter.
And I'm trying to determine what those are right now, but planning those into my schedule. So one action you can take is you can picture what you want and then you can post some goals that are going to lead you towards what you want. And again, you want to post those where you're going to see them every day consistently.
On your fridge, bathroom, mirror, car dash. Those are my favorite spots. Right there. So you can. Number three is choose experiences over stuff. We are going to have to let go of stuff in order to have what's best and biggest for us. So the things that weigh us down are often the things that are material. So if we learn to let go and live a lifestyle where we don't have to have everything and enough is enough, then we can choose to budget for the things that are most important in our lives.
And those are going to be experiences with people we care about, and new experiences with people that we're going to meet, [00:09:00] and challenges that we're going to face, and opportunities that we're going to tackle. Those are the experiences I'm talking about here. So over the last few years, I've been to Europe with my daughter a couple times.
I've had some really cool experiences with some friends doing things that I normally wouldn't do, you know, I try new things. I've had some really great experiences with my siblings, visiting family in different locations around the country. Because yes, none of us, none of them live here in cold Kansas.
It was five degrees when I believe it, when I started recording this podcast today, I don't know what the. Real feel, chill factor was, but it was lower than that for sure. So those experiences, and you're going to have to intentionally budget for some of these experiences if you're like me and don't have just all kinds of spare cash, you know, it's things that I want to pay for with cash.
And I don't talk about how I manage money a whole lot on this podcast, but I have been a Dave Ramsey follower for a long time back since 2006. And following the baby steps has helped me a lot. And I've lived and ran my, I've run my [00:10:00] business on a cash basis without debt. I've been debt free for, for many years now.
And I only got a credit card because I started to travel to Europe some on these trips with my daughter and meeting my sister there and on a business trip and just needed to, because it was more expensive to have. A debit card transactions are more expensive than credit card transactions in Europe.
There's actually no charge for that. So anyway, I'm not like a perfectionist when it comes to that kind of stuff, but I do believe that when we save for something and then we purchase it with cash, it just changes the way it feels when you know you're going on a trip and you know, you can afford it. And you know that you're not going to have to crack open your credit card to get by.
That's a really exciting thing. And all those trips I've budgeted for. One thing you can do right now is to think about what kind of. What kind of stuff you're going to let go of in order to have the experiences that you want. And by experiences, I think of concerts, seeing comedians. They don't have to be expensive.
Going on camping trips. Those are some of the best [00:11:00] experiences I have as well. Going on camping trips with friends to different parts of Kansas and different parts of California. Going on hikes. Playing poker is a great experience. I've had a really good time playing poker with buddies and with family.
We did that over Christmas. Yes, we taught the minors how to play poker. Don't tell anybody. Yes, and we did use money, but I don't know what the laws are in California, but hopefully we didn't break any. We didn't use a whole lot of money. 10 bucks. That was the most you could lose. So we figure out what those experiences are and they can be playing games with people.
They can be cooking. And trying a new recipe. But those are experiences where you invite somebody to help you, and you create a new experience with them. Going on a walk. Some great memories I have with friends and family going on a walk and talking. Talking about things, getting to know them at a deeper level.
And I love my legacy jar, the Decide Your Legacy, the legacy jar for that, because it has questions, it has 109 different questions and I'll put a link in the show notes as well to that. So there's actually, I believe we're [00:12:00] almost sold out, but if you want one, they're 47 dollars and we're getting ready to produce a new version this year, which I'm super excited about.
So you'll get one of the collector's editions, which I think we literally probably have three of them left, but of this actual edition. So, but check it out and you can order one if you want. And so that choosing experiences over stuff, letting go of things. So in one experience that you can have is right now, you can create another experience, a learning experience for yourself.
You can hit the link to shatter proof yourself. These are seven small steps to a giant leap in your mental health. It took me. Over a year to put this content together. It's a brief video and workbook that you fill out. And if you complete that, send me your completed worksheet at Adam at DecideYourLegacy.
com or support at DecideYourLegacy. com. I'd love to see that. You don't have to do that, but check that out. Subscribe if you haven't already, so you can watch that video. You won't want to miss it because it's going to give you seven practical things you can do to improve your mental health. And I've been doing this stuff for 25 plus years.
I've [00:13:00] given you the nuggets that work. It works. If you work at it's not easy stuff, but it is simple. It's going to take some changes to your lifestyle, but it's going to be exciting and make a big difference in your life. So hit that link to Shatterproof yourself. Number five, I believe, yes, I've gone through one, two, three, four.
So number five is, oh, and I love this. And this is such a cool thing. If you really take this to heart, be ready to film. Okay, so you have your camera ready, and luckily our cameras are so great at taking photos and videos, but you find ways to take pictures and record the experiences on a consistent basis.
And many times with friends and family, I have, or someone's wanted to take a picture and I've complained about it, or I've acted like I didn't want to take a picture right now and they've done the same with me. Like, not right now, this isn't a good time, let me fix my hair, whatever. But I have found that if I put a little bit of heat on them, you don't.
Force people to do it, but you just get those pictures and you capture those moments and you can set a goal every week to say, I'm going to get two to three great pictures. Cause if you're like me, you take multiple pictures of [00:14:00] certain scenes and you get two to three great shots or maybe 10 pictures a week or whatever, seven pictures a week.
And then two to three great videos a week of your kids, of your friends, of doing something funny, of some kind of experience that you have playing golf, being outside, walking around, you see a bird, you see. Really great sunset, you see a really great sunrise, you see something that you want to remember and record, and then you can go back and reflect on those.
I find that's a great way for me too, which is another thing that you can do, is if I want to remember the good things in my life, I go back and I look through my camera roll, and I look at the videos that I've kept, and the things that I've favorited over time, because I do try to go through all of my photos periodically, and then I Favorite the ones that I really like.
And sometimes I don't get all the ones that are really my favorite, so I go back sometimes. I don't want to delete everything, but I will delete photos too as I go, cause I'll have multiple shots of the same scene or the same person or whatever. And I want to keep those and remember them. And then you can show those to your family.
I've done this for the last two years where I put together a calendar for my family and I put recipes on the calendar as well. And I [00:15:00] put people's birthdays and anniversaries on there. So like my brother's birthday is in April and I put one of his famous recipes. Yes, he's a very good cook. Put it on there.
It was really cool. And that was a fun thing. I put pictures of him, someone who was a kid, other people's birthdays on there. And then we get that and share it and can reflect on it. And I found that people really find that helpful. And so if I can go through the year saying, I'm going to create these memoirs at the end of the year as Christmas presents, or I'm going to create slideshows reflecting people's lives at the end of their life or at the end of the year, then that helps me to remember to capture moments as I go.
And it creates this positive anticipation in my life. So the fifth, the sixth thing is create positive morning routines. So you're training yourself to find the joy and the positive experiences in the little things. And your morning routine can start that in your life. So whether it's having a cup of coffee in the morning, I know a lot of people really enjoy that.
Whether it's doing your, some reading in the morning when you wake up or Doing some kind of exercise or a walk in the morning when you wake up, but you're building these positive routines in your life. [00:16:00] Things you're excited about that are little in your life can start your day off right. So I'm a huge fan of gratitude and there's real evidence that gratitude can stop the process of ruminating, which means you're spinning on a worry consistently.
Then that choice to be grateful and reflect on these experiences and the ones you're going to create in the future is incredibly helpful. I cannot emphasize that enough. If you choose gratitude willingly, and in some of the darkest moments of my life, I have found it extremely difficult to choose gratitude and helpful when I do, but I will say that I've gone months without being grateful in my adult life because I've been discouraged and felt let down by God and just felt like I didn't want to try, and that was not Good and healthy and then getting back into that habit has made a big difference.
So I try to journal three things every morning. One of them I'll share with you because I've shared it many times, it's my daily five and five. This is where I would encourage you to start is you write down every morning when you get up, five things that happened the day before that were positive in your life and five things you're looking forward to later in the day.
If you don't have any, then you plan [00:17:00] some into the rest of your day and it can be something very simple. So the, I have actually eight items here. I thought I had seven, but this, the seventh is to say yes. Now saying no is important. You need to have boundaries. You want to have boundaries. It's important to be, to have boundaries, to have a healthy life and not be codependent.
Saying yes is equally as important because yes is to the opportunities that are in front of us to impact the lives of others. And that's what great experiences are. We're bringing encouragement and joy. and positivity in the lives of the other people around us. That's where humor comes into play. That's where fun comes into play.
That's why we record these things and reflect on them and remember them like I did with my buddy. So I've had some situations where I have said yes and I have a great experience because I said yes, but I could have lost my life by saying yes. I'm serious. So I bet I'm kind of serious, kind of not. So two of them were on hikes.
One of them was with my dad. I decided to say yes to my dad that he knew a shortcut. down [00:18:00] Pyramid Peak. And my dad will remember this. And, okay, my dad and my uncle once, if anyone knows where Mount Clark is, it's the highest peak in the Yosemite Valley, I believe. And they got lost in the Yosemite Valley when I was a kid.
We were out in a cabin in Curry Village in Yosemite with my mom and my aunt and my siblings waiting for them while the park rangers had to track them down. And that's somebody that I shouldn't say yes to on a hike. He's a very fast hiker and you don't want to take shortcuts on the trails in Yosemite.
Then I said yes to my buddy Nate on a hike in Colorado, a 14er. He decided that there was a shortcut and I decided to follow him and we got lost. And luckily we found our way back, but that was not the right reason to say yes. Do you want to say yes to doing those things that are wise and smart and scary?
And they're a chance to take an emotional risk, an opportunity in front of you to do something new. And some things that you can say yes to are meeting new people. And that's number eight. Meet new people that will build positive experiences into your life. How? There are so many interesting, incredible [00:19:00] people out there.
And you can have this mentality that people are going to take from you or it's dangerous or you're going to get hurt. I know what it's all about. I struggle with that myself. I have been hurt and I have fear inside of me and my battle is every day to let go of the fear and try to see the opportunity and that does mean reaching out.
So put more weight on understanding other people and being curious than them understanding you. That will take a lot of the pressure off of you. Trust your gut and your instincts when you know it's not right or you don't feel comfortable with certain people. Don't get sucked in to being controlled.
Take action to be in situations where you're around new people regardless and then you can trust that you have the intuition You have the power to recognize the dangerous situations and get out of them So a client recently told me that she stood up to somebody that was trying to take advantage of her I was really proud of her for saying that for doing that It was a really cool thing and then when you stand up to bullies they back down when you stand up to bullies They don't like it And they see [00:20:00] that their tactics are not actually going to work, so you can say yes to opportunities knowing that you're going to meet some bad apples along the way, but the opportunity makes it worth it because you're going to meet some great people too.
What can you say yes to? Engaging in hobbies, playing golf, joining a new club, going to church, volunteering, going out with a new group of friends, maybe even asking if you can join some group of friends on a luncheon at work, or doing some new activity, inviting. New people to do things. Risking that rejection.
Inviting. So, when I invite, I get rejected when I invite. Because I invite a lot. I'm an inviter, I'm a connector, I'm an extroverted type person. And so, I probably get rejected 70 percent of the time that I invite somebody to do things. So I remember over Christmas, I invited some buddies to do things on a number of occasions.
And they said no. I didn't take it personally, when in the past I probably would. It was just a chance to connect. And they lost out. Yes, they did lose out, and I want to punish them for that, and I hope they suffer. No, I'm just kidding. But I want people to be [00:21:00] invited and feel welcome. And I don't want to miss out on opportunities.
You know, there's these moments where I remember things that I missed out on, where people invited me to do something. And the ones that involve my daughter are really hard. Because when she's invited me to do a puzzle or play a game or go on a walk, and I look at her now at age 16, and she And I just treasure every time that I get with her.
And I can focus on those things that I missed, those opportunities, which I don't believe were a ton, but I did miss some and I did work too much at times when I could have had great experiences, but I've made a lot of, took advantage of a lot of the opportunities. I would say the majority of them, but the ones that I've missed, I still regret.
I still think about, I wouldn't say I regret them, but those do motivate me to make the most of the opportunities that we have in the future. And to be excited about the opportunities in the future. And to see that the best is ahead of me, not behind me. Even though I'm probably through half of my life, but who knows?
Maybe I live to be over 100. I'm 50 years old. So what you can do here is you can just decide where is there a people group? Where is [00:22:00] there some opportunities that you've probably said no to in the past, but you're going to say yes this time, this year. When you get invited, when you get an opportunity, you can take advantage of that opportunity.
So let's go ahead and recap. These eight different things you can do to build positive experiences into your life this year. So number one is you can create an experience mindset to see the experiences and devalue those more than stuff. You can picture what you want and post it somewhere with those goals posted with that vision.
You can choose experiences over stuff and see that they're more valuable than stuff because no one at the end of their life at the end of their life, they don't regret that they Spent too much time building positive experiences with friends and family and people and meeting people. They never regret that kind of stuff.
They regret the opportunities like that that they didn't say yes to. So you can be ready to film. That is number four right there. Be ready to film and take advantage and work that into your life. You can create a positive morning routine to work in that gratitude mindset. You can meet new [00:23:00] people and you can say yes.
So you are finished with this podcast here and I want to close and just let I want to say to you, to remind you that transformational change requires action, right? And it takes much more action than it does insight. You're gaining insight and inspiration today. And I want you to remember that and apply it and write it down, but you have to take an action based on something that you learned today.
So what is it? Was it one just thing? Maybe it's taking pictures or maybe it's saying yes to somebody who's invited you to do something and you've said no in the past or inviting somebody new to do something. plan that you take action on is a hundred times better than the perfect plan that you never act on.
So what resonated with you the most today? By the end of the day, I want you to take an emotional risk based on this insight. And if you really want it to stick, teach it to somebody else. Again, do me a favor for this episode, do a friend, share it and say, you know, I heard this, it was inspiring and you.
We'll find inspiration in it too. Check out the Decide Your Legacy podcast. I'm going to go ahead and sign off the way that I always do. [00:24:00] Make it your mission today to live the life now that you want to be remembered for 10 years after you're gone. When people are talking about you 10 years after you're gone, what do you want them to say?
You decide your legacy, no one else. I appreciate you greatly and I'll see you next time.