Hello and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Sharina. I'm your host. I'm your partner in transformation and personal and collective change. Your executive for leadership and transformation coach. And just someone with a lot of passion, ambition for, and believe in our human potential to change, grow, transform ourselves, and by doing so transform the world, create more positive impact, and just create a more amazing world for all of us to live in. Today we are talking about optimism. And by the end of this podcast, you're gonna have a tool to help you be more optimistic, to help you to become more optimistic, or in other words, grow your optimism muscle by doing some optimism reps. But first, why bother? Why do you wanna be more optimistic? Maybe skeptics have it better, and maybe looking at the world with more, a lot more caution and criticism and uh pessimism, maybe it works better, maybe it protects you better from shit that can happen to you and will happen to anyone. Like, why bother trying to become more optimistic? Well, first, a little bit of research thrown at you. So there was some study done with 300 young adults in Japan. And what they found is optimistic individuals, for example, are less likely to experience severe procrastination. Positive future outlooks, not personal well-being, significantly affect procrastination habits or not getting stuff done, or maybe not even starting. And my thought, my hypothesis for this is based on my experience with coaching clients, with my personal experience, like really reflecting on my state of mind, uh, on my mood, and what I end up doing in my life. What I learned is that when we think, in order to for us to want to take action, to create something, especially to do something challenging, we gotta believe two things. Number one, that we have what it takes to do the challenge, to go through the task and accomplish something, we gotta believe in it. Otherwise, why bother? And then the second one, that the future will meet us with opportunities and our hard work will pay off to something better. Otherwise, if we don't believe those two things, if we are not optimistic about two things, why bother? You might just do nothing and stay where you are and see what happens. And that's why probably severe procrastination happens. People who are for one reason or the other, there may be, might be many different reasons, decide whether they realize it or not to believe that A, either the world is not that great and no matter what they do, things are not gonna get better, or number two, that they are not capable of influencing the events in their life in their future with their actions. So basically, when you are more pessimistic, you tend to do less stuff, grow, create, get out there and explore because you don't believe it's worth it. Why bother? Right? And if you are the kind of person who wants to expand your opportunities, who want to create greater things in life, who believes that brighter future is possible, and it is possible only when we put our action and effort towards that. If you want to become and exist as this kind of individual, who then ends up taking more action instead of procrastinating, that's why you want to develop your optimism muscle and put in some optimism reps. And here is why I'm talking about optimism muscle and optimism reps. So this morning I went to Sona, and in sauna there were two of us, me and uh and a guy, and we started talking about different things about uh our emotional disposition or basically our tendency to be a certain way, negative or positive. And I told him this comparison of story. When you go to the gym and the sauna is in the gym, so we both just worked out and we saw each other working out. When you go to the gym and you work on your muscle, let's say your biceps or your legs, you put in the reps, you expect to see results. And you usually see results if you go with some consistency. So you see your legs getting stronger, your biceps getting bigger, and you know that more reps, better quality reps, will lead to you developing better muscle. But we understand it about our physical bodies, but so often we don't understand that the same exact thing works for our mental muscle, for our emotional disposition or our state, tendency to be either more pessimistic or more optimistic. Now, uh each of us were born to a certain environment, to a certain family, and to each of us, more positive, the negative things happened, and also we acquired mental habits or ways of thinking from our caregivers, usually in our environment. And so we conditioned ourselves to have certain kinds of thoughts because those thoughts produced, for better or worse, some result. We're still alive, right? We succeeded with being alive, too. We think like, and our way of thinking became such a part of us that we never questioned it or asked ourselves, where does this kind of thinking came from into my head? We think this is how we are, and I'm here to challenge this, and it's not just me, it's a whole body of psychology research. So it's not the way you are, it's your thinking habits. And the reason why you got those thinking habits is the very same reason why so many people get eating or exercise or lifestyle habits in their family. It just, you know, you grow up and you eat a certain way because your mom ate a certain way. And so you grow up and you think a certain way because that's what you saw or in thoughts, in actions, in words from your caregivers. And then it becomes such a part of you, the part that you don't see compared to your bicep or your legs, that you didn't even question it. You think this is how I am, and I'm again here with a whole body of psychology research supporting this point of view, is that this is just another habit that you acquired. And yes, there's also some genetic, but genetic component, what we are learning, is very tiny compared to nurture or what's been uh praised or conditioned in your environment and what you are used to doing over and over and over again. So back to optimism reps. I told him, you know, people know that when you go to the gym, you do the reps and your bicep gets stronger. But we don't think about our mental habits the same way because we don't see them. But if you do some reps, changing your mindset, changing your train of thought, just like a bicep, you will develop a stronger or different emotional disposition or the lens through which you look at the world, whether more optimistic or more pessimistic. And I told my partner in Sona for this day, I told him, and just like you don't expect your bicep or your legs to get stronger after one repetition or one day in the gym, also we should not expect our mind conditioned by decades of thinking the same things to ourselves. We shouldn't expect our mind to change in a day as well. So, uh what does it have to do with practicality and things you can do to improve your emotional disposition, whether to become more optimistic, to do more stuff in life, and to change more stuff and to grow your potential versus staying in comfort zone, kind of the same old dogs, doesn't learn new tricks. Yada yada. What you want to do is you want to put in some repetition for your mindset as well. When it comes to optimism, I wrote this blog post on optimism reps with the name Optimism Reps Reps, Cure Procrastination. Three questions to shift your doom and gloom thinking that keeps you stuck. How I teach my clients, how I help my clients to change their thinking, their emotional disposition is whenever they notice doom and gloom scenario happening in their head to question it. And with this questioning, redirecting their mind to see a different side of any scenario in your life, a brighter side, an opportunity for a brighter future, for things working for you, not against you. So three questions that I often share with my clients. Number one, whenever you hear in your head this doom and gloom scenario, this uh pessimistic conversation, ask yourself. You don't have to ask all three, you can just use one of them, whichever, or come up with your own to just see a better thing that can be coming out of this stuff that you didn't like that just happened. So, number one, what opportunity might be hiding here that I'm not seeing yet? What opportunity might be hiding here that I'm not seeing yet? And guys, in my personal life, there were so many cases when at the moment I thought that is the worst thing. This is the worst thing that could have happened to me. And then in a week, sometimes some months, sometimes a couple of months, I look back at that and I looked where it led my life. I'm like, you know, this actually was the best thing that happened to me. Because if that relationship worked out, I'd be now stuck in this and I wouldn't be able to do this, which I'm actually absolutely loving. Or some stuff that I wanted to buy, I couldn't buy because it wasn't available at the time, or I didn't have the cash at the time. And then in retrospect, after a couple of weeks, I'm like, you know, I didn't I didn't even want it. It would take so much time to just now have this in my routine and like maintenance and all of that stuff, and now I have this cash that I can actually invest into something that I care about more. I'm like, yeah, I am so glad that didn't happen. So so many times in your life, you would have the same scenario. Maybe you just don't notice it anymore, where a thing you wanted didn't happen. But then because it didn't happen, it redirected you to something that actually, if you think about that, if you really think about that, is a much, much better outcome. Question number two: what's one thing that could go right here? It's a very similar question. Like we often think, well, or when we start thinking about doom and gloom scenarios in the future, like this can go wrong and that can go wrong and this and this, and and we're starting, you know, stressing out about that. But what in what if instead you ask yourself, what can go right in that situation, in that interviewer, in this what I think, difficult conversation? What can go right and for the better? And then when you look forward to something, you prepare yourself better and you come in it with a completely different energy, and that changes the course of the entire thing, whether that's conversation, a meeting, an interview, or business negotiation, the energy you bring changes everything. And that energy changes when you ask yourself different questions because they make you focus on a different thing. Question number three: what's one small benefit or silver lining I can find in this? You know, shit happens to everyone, but what silver lining can you find in this? Like a tiny, it doesn't have to be big, but a tiny sliver of silver lining. What's working for your better future because of this doom and gloom? This build this microhabit of scanning for positives. Your brain will always find all the negatives that can and could happen. But positives, you need to put in some reps to then have a habit of focusing and finding that. Like positive, even tiny ones. So your brain starts to expect opportunity in the future, and more good things happen and coming, which will make you so much more likely to take more action, to take control, to put in the work, to grow, to increase the opportunity, to enlarge, expand yourself and your life, and to benefit the world because of that. So just like a muscle, don't expect your mind to change because you did it once. Just like you don't expect your bicep to grow or your running time improved because you went out for a run once. Doesn't work like that. But you have one nervous system and it works exactly the same way for your muscle or for your emotional disposition. A fancy word that scientists called your lens on the world, whether more positive or more negative, right? To change it, to rewire your brain, it takes time. Unless something drastic happens, which shows you with a lot of emotion and a lot of stuff happening, that can rewire you really fast. But other than that, and even to preserve that change that might happen in an instant because of some insight that happening, something drastic happening, you still need to maintain that. Just like running a marathon once wouldn't make you a great runner until you keep running, and unless you keep running. So optimism reps. Just like you don't expect your bicep to become Mr. Olympia kind of bicep because you went to the gym once. Don't expect you become an Simon Cynic-like optimist because you once used these questions, this technique of redirecting your mind, focusing it with the right kind of questions on a more positive, on a brighter, on a more opportunity-filled side of things. Do the reps. Take this challenge for the next seven days. Today's Sunday for me, so for the next week, five times a day, whenever you feel negative emotion, catch the thought. What's the negative you're focused on? And then ask yourself one of those questions that you can find in the show notes. Use one of those questions or all three, redirect your mind to a positive, and that's one rep. Do five of them, five of them, and you will have all the opportunity you need because our mind just likes going into negative and getting frustrated about things. Like even when you were waiting for your coffee in Starbucks, you won the lottery of life, and you still find the opportunity to get frustrated because somebody takes longer than you expect it to. But yeah, optimism makes you procrastinate less. And it's up to you to develop your bigger optimism muscle with some mindset reps, some optimism rep. So check out the questions, take the challenge, seven days, five reps in your optimism gym and see what happens. See how the world will change to reflect your inner transformation. Guys, don't forget to rage review and share this podcast episode. Share at least with one other person who might be negative and always like frustrated about things, and you know it's not working for them. Share this podcast with them. There is also research on optimism and your science of procrastination in the show notes. So check this out. Share the questions with them, do the optimism challenge, optimism gym together. 35 reps in seven days, five a day, and see what happens. See what happens to this person, to you, and if you keep it going to the rest of your life, which I have no doubts in. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your attention. Get your optimism workouts in, and till next time, keep growing.