An Attitude Of Gratitude - Move From Pessimism To Optimism With It

Guys,

I hope you guys are doing amazing wherever you are in the world.

My name is Boom Shikha and I welcome you to the Millionaire Happy Podcast.

In this episode,

I want to speak to you guys about something that I thought was impossible.

I assumed that if you were born a pessimist,

That means that you're going to be a pessimist for the rest of your life and I assumed that if you were born an optimist,

Then you're going to be an optimist for the rest of your life.

I am an optimist,

If you guys can't tell,

And I was born as one and I know that my family knew that I was an optimist as soon as I was out of the room and my sister knew it.

Everyone around me knows that I'm an optimist.

My sister,

On the other hand,

Is a pessimist and everyone around her knows that she's a pessimist and she herself knows it and we knew this from the time when she was a very young child,

Right?

And I think this is the kind of perspective that most people have on pessimism and optimism is that,

You know,

Once you're born with it,

Once you figure out what you are,

What your type is,

Then that's it.

That's the end of it.

That's what you are for the rest of your life.

There's no changing it.

There's nothing to do with it.

You're stuck with it,

Right?

I actually started reading this book and listening to some audios by Sean Anker,

A-N-C-H-O-R,

And he is a happiness researcher,

Which is amazing.

I mean,

Can you imagine telling your parents that you're going to research happiness?

He must be a very strong individual to make that happen.

But so he's a happiness researcher and he realized something.

He did a research on this specific topic and he realized that it is possible,

Absolutely possible,

For you to switch from being a pessimist to being an optimist and it's really,

Really easy to do so.

When I read about it and I heard him talking about it,

It was as if a light bulb went off in my head.

I felt like this is some information that everyone on this planet needs to know.

Now,

I'm not saying that pessimism is not useful in its own way.

Pessimism is very pragmatic.

It's very practical.

My sister is one of the most practical,

Pragmatic people out there.

She knows what she's based in reality,

Whereas I am not based in reality a lot of times.

I'm based on my dreams.

I dream a lot.

I imagine the world as it could be,

Not as it is,

And I'm always making things happen.

Surprisingly,

A lot of these things happen as I imagine them,

Which is the reason I keep on going.

But for my sister,

She's very much based on reality.

You do things based on reality,

You think about reality,

And you don't make random assumptions.

You don't pretend like you know what's going to happen.

You don't dream about things that perhaps are not as they are.

Which is fine.

We need both kinds of people on this planet.

But I have found that if you are an optimist,

If you are a kind of person who believes in the possibility of things,

Who believes that there's so many more things that can happen,

I feel like the world is a better place in general.

I find that you're less threatened by the world.

You feel like there's more possibilities.

You feel like you're living in a world where it's just a better place to live in,

I find.

So this technique can help,

If you are a pessimist at all,

To kind of turn into a low-level optimist.

You don't have to completely remove your pessimism.

You don't have to completely become an optimist.

But you can become a low-level optimist,

Which means that you can move to the world in a way where you have more positivity and you believe that there are more possibilities,

Rather than everything is just based in reality and everything is just the way it is and there's nothing you can do about it and the world sucks and the government sucks and the politics sucks and all that stuff.

So I want to kind of move you guys,

If you are in that pessimistic mode,

To becoming a low-level optimist and the main technique that he recommends in order to do this,

Which is really simple and I'm so surprised at how simple this technique is and how powerful obviously it is,

That it can completely change an individual's perspective on the way they view the world,

Which is really,

Really important.

If you can change that little thing,

If you can change how you view the world,

I feel like you can change a lot of different things in your life.

You can move the barometer very quickly as soon as you change your view of the world.

I know a lot of people who move through the world thinking it's a battle place,

It's a war zone,

It's a place where you go in and fight and you have to fight for your rights,

You have to fight for everything,

Everyone's against you,

The world is against you,

The government is against you,

Everyone's trying to take you down and with that kind of mentality these people go around looking through the world and it is that kind of world for them.

Everyone's always against them,

Everyone's always having to fight with,

They're always having to fight with everyone for everything that they need and it's a very harsh place for them to live.

Whereas there are other people I know who believe that life is a dance,

It's a beautiful symphony that you kind of create with other people in your life and other people,

Species,

Situations in your life and it's beautiful and it's fun and you dance for a little bit and then you're gone and for them the way they look at the world is completely different obviously and they move to the world very differently as well.

It's a world of possibilities for them,

It's a beautiful place,

It's filled with magic and mysticism and they love it.

And so you can imagine how different these two people's lives are and that's the reason I believe if you can change your perspective to be a little bit more optimistic I think you'd have a very different way of living in the world.

Can you imagine a world where you believe that everything is meant for you,

Everything is working for you,

Everything is working towards your goals and everything is you're like a paranoid but a reverse paranoid where you believe everyone on this planet,

Everything on this planet is working to get you to your goals which is amazing.

Can you imagine a world where you believe that?

So the technique is very simple as I said,

It is basically you sit down for two minutes every single day and you write down three things you're grateful for.

So it's a great gratitude journal but there's a couple of things that are really important because typically a gratitude journal you just get up every morning and you say oh I'm so grateful to be alive,

I'm so grateful for my health,

I'm so grateful for my family and that's it.

But this is a different kind of journal where you have to first of all choose three different things every single day.

So it can't be your health every single day,

It can't be your family every single day,

It cannot be your car every single day,

It has to be completely different every single day which means that your brain has to work harder in order to scan your life to figure out what you're really truly grateful for.

Now if you're living in a western world or if you're living in this world right now I feel that there's a lot to be grateful for all the time,

So much to be grateful for right.

And so you will be able to find things but that kind of mechanism of your brain scanning your life and finding patterns and looking for positive things is what changes your perspective on life right.

And I'll speak a little bit more about that a little bit later but the second thing that's really important is that you have to say why.

Why are you grateful for this item?

And that in itself is such a powerful question.

I've said this before,

The questions that you ask is really really important in life,

You have to ask the right questions.

A lot of people ask the questions why me or why does this always happen to me or what is wrong with me or why am I such an idiot,

Things like that you know,

They're wrong kind of questions.

The questions to ask obviously are you know what am I so grateful for,

How am I so lucky,

Blah blah blah.

But in this specific scenario why are you so grateful for this specific item?

For example if you write down that I'm so grateful for the fact that I have my limbs,

Why are you so grateful for it?

Because I can do yoga,

Because I can hike through the forest,

Because I can travel through the world,

Blah blah blah.

That's really really important.

So two things,

It has to be new things every single day,

Three new things every single day and you have to answer the question why.

Why are you grateful for this?

Now what's the mechanism behind this?

Why does this work and why does it change you from a pessimist to an optimist?

Our brain is a pattern seeking machine and you've probably heard this statement before,

Our brain is a pattern seeking machine.

It's always looking for patterns,

That's the reason when you look at clouds in the sky you see patterns.

There are no patterns really,

There are no rabbits in there or dragons or Donald Trump's but we do see patterns because our brain is always looking for patterns.

That's how we know if something's dangerous,

Something that if we need to run away from something or we need to move towards something,

It gives us information.

But a lot of times pessimists are looking for negative patterns all the time,

That's their mentality,

That's the way they've been bought up,

That's the way they look at the world,

Which means they're always looking for negative patterns.

And because they're looking for negative patterns they find negative patterns.

Whatever you look for you will find.

I mean there are a lot of horrible things to look for in the world,

There's always a lot of crap happening in the world and in your own life so if you want to look for it and find it you shall find it.

That's the reason pessimists have very negative opinion of the world because they are looking for negative things and negative things find them.

Positive people or optimists basically are always looking for positive patterns,

Positive positive patterns and this is something that I notice very much is the difference between my sister and I because I will see something and I'll be like wow that's so beautiful,

It's so beautiful done and she'll always look at the negative,

Oh they just ruined this this walkway or they did this like that.

It's really interesting to me,

I'm like but don't you see the beauty of it?

And she's like no,

Her brain works differently right?

But when you do this gratitude journal what you're doing constantly on a consistent basis every single day is you're looking for positive patterns in your life.

And especially when you're a pessimist that's really really important because it trains your brain to look for positive patterns not for negative patterns because you're already used to that and you're really good at it and you're fine with that,

You don't need to do that anymore but