558 | Improve How You Think For The New Year – Part 2

Chris LoCurto 0:10
Welcome to the Chris LoCurto show where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are. Welcome to the show, folks, I hope you're having a fabulous day, wherever you are.

Today, we are continuing with part two of how to think better how to have a more positive mindset, in this new year, how to have some simple strategies that are going to change the way you think and enhance your mindset. Now, last time, if you've not listened to part one, go back, you gotta hear that one, first, go back episode 557. Go back and listen to that one. And just really dig in on those, those, that first section of talking through understanding your current mindset, setting a foundation for positive change. And then we actually started into practical techniques to improve your thinking. And the last thing that we ended up on is battling the lies with the truth. So I broke that down decently. But we're not done. So today, I'm gonna pick back up, starting with the practical techniques to help you to improve your thinking. So if we're, we're battling these lies with the troops, and we're getting that negative self talk out of our brains. And again, go back and list all that, you know, we're creating this foundation, where we understand how to destroy a decent amount of the negative self talk.

Well, what else is there as far as being able to do that? What are other techniques that we can do to improve our thinking? Well, one of those things is actually learning how to break down challenges problem solving. So something that we discover is a lot of folks have a lot of negative self talk in their mind a lot of negativity, when they're facing challenges. Oh, my gosh, I cannot tell you how many times people come upon a challenge. And the first thought is, nope, can't do it. Nope, I'm not gonna be able to do that. We are our four year old daughter, we are absolutely amazed after almost a year to have been able to adopt our, our baby girl, we have a new liccardo in the family. Six in the line of girls. So we have been blessed with having this amazing little girl. And one of the things it's so funny because she has me as a dad. So there are times that she will run into a challenge. And one of the things she hears not so much now, but in the early earlier days, which has been a year would one of the things that she would hear me say is maybe face your fears. Let's face your fears. Now, again, we're not talking about crazy, ridiculous fears. We're talking about, you know, she's for what does it like to jump off of this curb onto this lawn? You know, right now she's scared, we go for a hike on the on the farm and she gets up on top of a stump and loves it. And then, you know, Dad steps away. And she wants daddy to come help her and catch her and I'm like, Nope, you can jump down. You got this and she gets scared. And I help her walk through this process. But what does she normally do? When I present her with a challenge? The first thing she thinks is I can't do that. I've never done that before. I'm not gonna be able to make that I'm gonna get hurt. This is going to look really bad. I'm going to look really stupid. Now she's probably not thinking I'm going to look bad and look stupid. She's probably more concerned with the fall actually injuring her. But let's translate that into the 34 year old version of herself, right? The adult version of herself is going this is gonna look really stupid. I'm not gonna, this is gonna hurt me and people are gonna think I'm stupid, and I'm gonna look funny and so on and so forth. This negative self talk that happens or I'm not smart enough for that. I've never even come across something that's difficult before how in the world could I possibly think that I'm going to be able to accomplish this. This is the kind of crap that happens in our brains. This is the kind of stuff we tell ourselves. It is limiting beliefs. It is negative self talk. It is convincing ourselves that our reality is is that we're not good enough. Smart enough. capable enough, experienced enough. Brave Enough. Whatever it is. The amazing thing is even through some very scared times for my little four year old.

Well actually she's five now for my little girl but she was four during these times. When I go ahead and realize how far I can push her until she actually does the jump. You can do this. You've got this daddy's right here. I will catch you if you fall. I will protect you. I will take care of you. You can do this. I believe in you. You can make this happen. Boom. She jumps, so out from fear from maybe a little shakiness in her voice, maybe even a little tear. And then she jumps and her excitement from being able to not only accomplish the jump, but overcoming the fear is absolutely outstanding. The joy, the smile, why? I already know what's going to happen. When she jumps in, she makes it I even know what's going to happen if she jumps and falls a little bit. But she's okay. She's still going to be so incredibly stoked that she's alive that she didn't die, jumping off a two foot stump, right. And every single time we've faced some of these things, even some difficult ones, some scary stuff we've faced, you know, scary for a four year old, we face some things or I've been able to talk her through this and tell her you can do this. I'm right here. I believe in you face your fears. That took a child who was scared to do something like jumping off a stump to accomplishing just crazy stuff. She's gotten really confident in herself in her ability to do stuff and face challenges. And even little things. We had a rooster that used to come and try and attack her. And man, she would run to daddy screaming crying. And this rooster. I mean, it's you know, 1/3 of her size. But she doesn't realize that she can actually make that rooster scared.

And so there were times that we I would walk with her hand in hand. I watch and I would wait for that rooster. If he came after her, then I was gonna take care of that rooster. Right, but that my goal was to help her to recognize that she can face the fear. It's so funny, just the other day. That rooster was out by the house and she's mentioned it hey, there's real stress and hit go walk right over to them. Go walk towards them and see what happens. And this is a rooster that used to scare her and kind of come after her. She looked at him, she started walking right towards him. He started walking away. She just kept going. She goes, Daddy, he's moving away. He's moving away. And I like that try baby face your fear. You got this. You're okay. If he tries to do something, just kick him. You'll be he's, you're not that big. You'll be fine. He'll be fine. Everything's gonna be okay. But face your fear, don't allow that thing to terrorize. You don't allow that thing to convince you that you're not okay. And that you can't handle it. Guys, wow, that seems small and childlike? Because it is. It's the same thing as adults when we face challenges when we face problems. And the thing that we tell ourselves is that we're never going to be able to handle this. I've never done this before. I don't want to look stupid Hey, my high seas out there. That's one of the biggest issues, right? Well, I don't know how to do this. And I'm gonna look really stupid if I don't do it well, to who? Well, everybody's going to take No, only you. You're the only one who's gonna think that. And by the way, if anybody does think that they're not worthy of your time. Right? If you take on a challenge, and you fail, what's worse, what's worse facing the challenge and failing, or choosing not to face the challenge, which is a bigger failure. Right now, obviously, I'm not talking about doing stupid, I don't think you should go out and juggle chainsaws. I'm saying. Take a look at the regular problems and challenges that you experience in your life. How do you face them? What are the things you tell yourselves? So here's what we need to do. We need to start breaking these things down. If we face a challenge, and what I like to say often is reverse engineer the thing. What does success and let's even look like here's the problem in front of me. What a success look like it looks like this. Well, okay, well, what does it take to get to there? Well, oh, well, it's got to be this and okay, what what's before that will this and what's before that will probably these three steps. Okay?

So if you go and do those five steps, are you going to do a heck of a lot better job than if you don't? Well, of course, Chris. I absolutely. Well, then, what are you worried about? Huh? Yeah, but what if I don't do it? Perfect. What if you don't do it perfect. What if you do the best you can? By asking yourself the question how can I tackle this or, and my gosh, this is you hear me say it all the time gain quality perspective. Go ask people you can tax the collective intelligence who do you know around you? I love there's so many times I turned to my son in law and I'm like, Dude, I'm positive. You've researched this? What's the answer? I'm looking for it. He's like, you want this this and this. Thanks. That's all I need. Because I know how detailed he is. And I know how much he's gonna jump into every aspect of, of what the thing is, and it's I'm like, You He's gonna do a better job than I did research on this. Just ask him what the answer is. Go get the answer, right, solve the problem.

Figure out what you need, even if it includes asking, I know, oh my gosh, this is gonna hurt asking for help. Guys, I'm not somebody who has a problem asking for help. I ask people all the time. In fact, I've caught myself, you know, couple times going, Well, that was stupid. I probably could have just Google that answer. I asked something. So you know, you know, silly, because I usually ask pretty big questions. Hey, what does this like helped me with this? What are your thoughts on this? It never dawned on me go, Hey, how do you do this little thing over here? And it's like, oh, that was stupid. I could have googled that one. I could have gotten an easier answer, not taking up somebody else's time. But the crazy thing is, is do you know how much people actually appreciate, not you dumping your problems on them, but being able to speak from their experience into your situation, so that you can go tackle it? A lot of people, right? So things you've got to do when it comes to problems, instead of telling yourself all these negative things, how you're never gonna be able to do it, how you're never gonna be able to handle it, how you're gonna screw everything up and stop telling yourself all of that. What if you start with, hey, I can do this? Or at the bare minimum, I can do the best job I possibly can. What does it look like for me to just spend a few minutes instead of telling myself how horrible I am? What if I spent a few minutes working on the logical side of my brain, not the emotional side? And start asking myself, How could I make this thing happen? What would it look like? What are some steps? What perspective? Can I gather from other people? What research can I do online? How can I get to actually getting to some element, some, you know, some modicum of success on whatever this thing is this challenge that set before me, start breaking it down, break it down into the pieces that bring you to a confident level of yep, I would be better moving in the direction of handling this problem than sitting here telling myself not to do it. What you'll discover is almost every single time, it's more painful not to tackle the task not to tackle the problem than to sit there and tell yourself how horrible you are, and you'll never get it done. I have failed at many things. Because I've not been afraid to go after them. And when I fail, guess what I do? Well, I screwed that up. How do I fix that? What can I do better. But the failure of not trying? I got a lot of that in my youth, the scared kid who you know, there's lots of things that I did what there were huge challenges as a youth. But there's other things that I was afraid of man's opinion. And I held back. And man, those were regrets. They're not now. Because those things, don't bother me anymore. Figure it out, see what you can do. But I can tell you, there's plenty of times when I was younger, that the fear of man's opinion, really jacked me up. Another technique that you can do, starting right now, and this is tough. And it may even be difficult to really, really understand if you've not attempted this before. But what I want you to start focusing on is embracing the learning from failures. Failure is a great teacher for the person who is willing to learn from it.

Failure is a great teacher, for the person who is willing to learn from it. I'd say the third time, but I think you get it. You've got to be willing to fail and BLK with failure as long as it's not fatal failure. And then ask yourself What can you possibly learn from this failure? If you've followed us for long enough? You've heard me talk about multiple times that I expect my team to fail. I just expect them to solve the failure. What happened? How did it happen? Why did it happen? How do we fix it? How do we make sure we never do this again? My goal is don't keep failing at the same thing. But if you're not failing at all, that means you're not moving enough stuff around. You're not taking enough risk. Why do people not take risk? Fear? Fear of what failure? Yes, sure. But fear of failure in a vacuum is not the thing that they're worried about. If it's just them failing and nobody else knows about it. They're less concerned about that. It's the fear of failing and other people. No. Other people see it, other people experience it. That's the real fear that people are facing. So what do we need to do about this? Quit stinking worrying about other people's opinions? Well, let me rephrase it this way. I quit stinking worrying about unhealthy people's opinions. Focus on the opinions of Healthy People. How are healthy people going to face you failing? Well, how do I face my daughter when she fails? You know, she jumped off that stump and didn't land on her feet and started crying because she didn't land on her feet. How would I handle that? I would look at it and go, babe, try it again. It's okay that you didn't land on your feet. Try it again. See if you can do it again. It doesn't matter. You don't have to land on your feet the first time. I'm so proud of you for being brave enough to jump off of that stump. Way to go high five big hugs. I love you. You're amazing. Let's try it again. No, Daddy, I'm scared. Okay, you could face your fears. The great thing about my daughter is that works. Well, I mean, if you're afraid of it, then don't worry about No, daddy, I'll do it. Okay, well, let's get back out there try again. Right? The thing is, she needs to experience failure. And then she needs to learn from this father in her life. That is telling her the failure is okay. Not like fathers and mothers in so many people's lives that told them that failure is unacceptable and how horrible they are. And they're never going to be good enough. What she needs to hear is the very thing she hears, babe, it's okay that you failed.

So what? I'm more proud of you for trying and failing than if you didn't try it all. Now get your butt back up there. Let's try it again. Let's see what happens. And she's so stoked to do so. It's so funny how she will then you know, even now, she will find something that's tall to jump off of not too tall. I mean, she's not that tall, right? And she'll daddy, watch this. And she'll jump off and land on her feet. Or sometimes she'll even land on her feet and roll out of it. She's like, I just did it. Folks, your fear is of the unhealthy person, the controlling person telling you that you suck. Is it okay? If you jump off the stump? And don't land on your feet? Is it okay? If the small fall doesn't hurt you. Maybe you get a little scrape up a little scratch or something. But you get back up on your feet. And you now know how to jump off that stump better. You've now experienced it get back on the stump and jump off it again. Until you do it right. Is it okay? Yes, it's okay. But it's only okay. If you allow it to be. And it's only okay. If you're willing to learn. It's only okay, if you're willing to face the failure experience the failure. And instead of beating yourself up like crazy with all kinds of negative self talk, ask yourself, why did that fail? What happened? How did it happen? Why did it happen? How can we fix it? How can I fix it? And how can I make sure it never happens again, learn from the failure and put those things in place, put them to work. The more you do this, and the more you face failures like this, the easier it will be for you to take on big challenges. The easier will be for you to develop a growth mindset. Not a limiting mindset, not a limiting belief. One that says I can't do that I'll never be able to do that I'll never be able to make that happen. But instead an abundance mindset. A growth mindset. I can do that. If I can't do it, I can at least try. And even if I fail at it, what can I learn from it? Let me tackle that thing the best I possibly can. What's the worst thing that can happen? Is there any fatal failures? If I fail this thing? No. Am I going to cause anybody any harm or pain? If I fail this thing? No. Is anybody gonna lose any money over this thing? If I fail this thing? Hopefully not. If that's involved, you might want to get really good advice. But no matter what if you can walk through this process and ask yourself, this is a failure I'm willing to face what if I fail, then I'll learn from it instead of beating myself up.

Folks, if you've been listening to me for any length of time, then you know the number one issue when it comes to business, when it comes to family, when it comes to friendships, is having a lack of high quality communication, to make sure that you are absolutely winning in every aspect of your life. It all starts with having great communication. The best way to get that communication is to understand your personality style and to understand the personality style of the folks that you're spending the most time with, whether it be at work, whether it be at home, the best way to do that is to go to Chris Ducker. dot com slash store and get your personality profile and personality profiles for your team to day get for your family members. Today, as you go through that profile, you will begin to see the greatest ways to communicate, go to ChrisLocurto.com/store today. Next thing I want you to focus on is building resilience, and building up emotional intelligence now, you know, we think of reserve Well, I don't know what you think of resilience, when I think of resilience, I think of something that is kind of elastic, something that has the ability to bounce back, right? When I think of resilience, that's what I think of going through the adoption process. You know, early on, we had to take some classes to be adoptive parents and, and one of those things is we went through a whole foster care process system teaching, which that our our goal was adoption. It wasn't fostering, it was adoption. But we still had to do this in, I'm glad that we did go through it. There's a lot of stuff that ended that we teach. But there was a couple of things that I really appreciated the way that they hit it. And one of those things was this aspect of resilience. And the way that they talked about it, especially in the the you know, it's for anybody, it doesn't matter what age you are, but obviously they're focusing on little ones, because they've experienced a lot of the kids come out of intense trauma. And they come out of incredible situations, really bad situations. And that's, that's what you experience, right? So how do we build resilience in somebody who's come out of very traumatic situations, and one of the things that they use, they use this diagram of like a kind of a weight on a seesaw is kind of like I say, seesaw, think of a board that has a fulcrum underneath it, right? A center point, and you've got this big box on it, well, every time you get hit with that the if the box is sitting in the center, it starts to move in the direction of you know, negative to negativity, not having a resilience, right. And the more it moves that direction, the heavier it gets, the more the more negative things that hit, the heavier that box gets. And so what you end up seeing is like, one side of it just drops to the bottom, you don't become very resilient at all. Instead, every time you get hit with something negative, it just as another crazy impact that is painful and hurtful, right difficult to experience and difficult to overcome. But with resiliency, it's amazing. If if people are able to bounce back, if people are able to make it through the negative situations, then that box might be sliding towards the left, but the board starts sliding towards the right.

In other words, your your fulcrum your your center actually continues to balance out the weights. I know it's probably a terrible example for me to say on you know, on a podcast without actually showing it to you. But the concept is this that the more negative stuff instead of it, dropping your your board to one side, instead of it dropping you into more negativity, what happens is it bounces off. It doesn't have the impact. You're more resilient, which means the more negativity that you experience, the more things that hit you, if you're able to grow from those things, if you're able to, you know, allow those things to roll off your back, then what happens is, is you're able to handle the negative hits even better. And I really enjoyed that. I probably just messed everybody up with my bad visual. But I really enjoyed that concept of looking at it from that aspect of thinking about where the fulcrum is in your life. So in other words, what is the thing that is helping you to experience negative situations and not receive them as something too harmful? too painful, too damaging? Are you able to go through negative situations and bounce back? You know, it's funny, my my wife, who's known me for quite a while. used to say I've never seen you stress. And so once in a great while I might be going through something and she starts really stressed out. I'm like, What are you doing? And she's like, well, something's wrong with you. And I'm like, yeah, what's so what was wrong with it? She's like, well, you just don't ever stress. I'm like, Oh my gosh, how can I stress all the time? I just deal with it. I do something with it. Right? I handle it. There's no point in me getting all freaked out. But every now and then I might be under a lot of stress and a lot of stress is going to show up up, right, I always thought that it showed anyways, I never realized that it doesn't show as much as you know, as I thought it did. And it was a good teaching, teachable moment to say, babe, um, I, I do stress a lot, but it's okay, if I do stress. There's nothing wrong with me stressing the thing is, is what do I do about it? How do I handle it? Right? Am I just sitting here being a victim? Or do I actually solve the stressful situation. And I think, from all of the things, and I've been through all a lot of negative crap in my life, but because of the things that we teach in the ways that we teach you guys how to handle stuff like this, because of doing it that way, for so long, it's created an incredible amount of resiliency, where the negative stuff sometimes hurts, sometimes impact sometimes knocks me back. But the ability to overcome those things is that you know, that stretchable aspect of me that allows me to go, Okay, well, that sucked, that hurts, that's painful. But what do I do about it? Now? How do I fix this? How do I handle this? Even if it's something that I have not done? It's maybe it's something that's happening to me? How do I solve this? And I will tell you, by far, the number one thing for me to do is always to go to God turn to God as fast as possible. I'm not one of those who, in situations like that goes, I can handle this on my own God's busy, he doesn't need me to turn to him on. Nope, no, no, nope, I am very aware that my Father in Heaven wants to help. And I'm also very aware that he may be allowing this thing to happen so that I grow.

So for me, what I do is what I do, you know, go to prayer, spend time with him. And after spending time with him, okay, what can I personally do outside of this? What can I do to fix this? Right? How can I bounce back from this? What can I do to keep this from hurting me? Well, one of the most important things after that is to be very realistic about the situation. You know, resilient people have a tendency to be very realistic with their current situation, their circumstance, whatever's going on, right. And, more importantly, they're very understanding of what options they have, and what choices they have and what control they have in the situation. So while negative things may happen, where my brain goes to, you know, after, if it's something really big, obviously, I'm going to pray for something small and just fix the thing. Right? I still might pray about it, but it's something I can knock out pretty quickly just knock it out. Right? What happens is, is my brain goes into what do I do now? Assess the situation? What's going on? What's happened? You know, how painful is this? Is this as bad as I think it is? Does it have you know, a lot of people will lose their minds thinking that you know, the sky is falling, when really the the situation is, you know, out of a 10? It's a two. And that's one of the questions I'll ask How bad is on a scale of zero to 10? How bad is the situation assess the situation? And I want to come up with a number I want to know. What do I think it is? Well, this is a two Oh, okay. Simmer down. This isn't that bad? Well, it's a five Oh, okay. Well, then, I need to make sure that I'm following a lot of the steps that I already talked about, you know, the techniques of how do I handle this, right? What if it's an eight, you know, I better be not only mean prayer, my family and prayer, our Bible study group and prayer, everybody, I need help on this, you know, if it's getting heavy duty, I need as much of God in this as I could possibly get right. Because this thing is super big and negative. The key is I have to be realistic, what you will discover is nine out of 10 times crud, maybe 99 out of 100 times, what you will discover is the level of negativity, the level of negative impact, pain, distress, all of that is way lower than you initially think it is.

And if you will just buckle down, you know, roll up your sleeves and get after it, you'll find that you can solve this a heck of a lot faster. And on top of that, for me, what I always figured out is if I can just get my hands dirty and you know solving this thing, then my mind is not focused on how bad it is. It's not focused on how negative is when I just get into start fixing stuff. And by the way, I'm a high s I'm an 88 S. So all my S is out there SS and C's don't procrastinate on this thing get after it. I had to learn that the faster I get after it, the less I focus on how negative it is. The less I focus on how painful it is. By the time I'm done with it. I don't have Negative thoughts about it anymore. It's fixed, it's done, move on. So you got to learn how to bounce back, you've got to learn how to take the negative hit and solve. Don't be a victim. Don't sit there in your own, you know, negativity, your own negative soup. Roll up your sleeves, get after it, fix this thing as fast as you can, and guess what's gonna happen, you will become more resilient. The more you practice this, the more you operate in this, the easier it is one more negative things come your way. I think it's James that says, after we've done everything we can to stand, still stand, do everything you can to handle this negative thing that's coming your way. And even when you've done everything, you can keep standing, keep fighting. Because the more you do this, the more resilience the more strength you'll have, when the next negative thing comes along. But here's the deal. If you don't ever practice it, you're never going to be able to accomplish it. If all you do is sit there and look at the negative thing and think poor me, oh my gosh, I hate this situation. I wish it wasn't this way. You're never going to solve the problem. Next thing you can do is begin. As I'm starting this, I know 65% of the population is going to hate this right that SS and C's begin embracing change and uncertainty. Ah. All of my SS and c's are out there go nope, I'm done. Turn it off. Listen to me. Don't turn it off. Don't turn it off. Have you experienced change and uncertainty in your life? Yes. Are you experiencing change and uncertainty in your life right now? Yes. Is there change and uncertainty in the world around you? Yes. Quit telling yourself that you can't handle change. I know you hate change, I understand that you hate change, I get it. Sometimes I don't like change. Sometimes I love change, it just kind of depends. The thing is, if you always sit in this state of mind where you hate change, don't want change, get a push back on change, when it comes, then every single time change and uncertainty comes it's going to be incredibly difficult for you. Because you're going to have to work through all of your self protection, you're going to have to build your walls as fast as you possibly can self protects up protects up protect, only to discover, change is still going to happen. It's still gonna happen, you're still gonna face it, you're still gonna have to do something about it.

So it's important for you to start recognizing that embracing change is okay. It doesn't mean that you have to like it. You don't have to like it. But if you don't prepare yourself for change, and learn how to work through change, and learn how to work through uncertainty, then every single time, you're going to have about 10 steps to many before you actually get to work and through change. And it's all going to be built around self protection. And it's all going to be you know, based in denial lies that you tell yourself, the sooner you can start embracing change. And I'm not saying you got to wrap your arms all the way around it right now start, take baby steps, right, start moving in the direction. Okay, changes come in? How can I handle this? What am I afraid of? What am I concerned about? Right? This is gonna, this is conflict. This means my worth is going to tank. If this thing happens, no, it doesn't. Start working through the process. Go back to, you know, Episode 587. And learn how to make this happen. Learn the steps, right? Listen to the things I'm talking about today. Put these things in place and start embracing start tackling, change, start, start moving in the direction of change, is this good? And it doesn't mean that all change is good. It doesn't mean that all change is necessary doesn't mean you have to do everything. But start asking yourself the question gain perspective, is this change necessary? Is this change? Okay? Is this change going to hurt anybody? What's the what what does this change going to look like? When it's completed? The start moving in the direction of that change of getting perspective about to change? Let me say that so that you actually know what you're facing. The sooner you do, the easier it will be and the less conflict that will be in your life. You will start to realize that you can accomplish this. You can deal with this. You know, usually it takes esses and sees a long period of time to process through before they can face change. And unfortunately, and I'm picking on the SS and C's but DS and as you deal with this as well. Just now to this level, right? What happens is, you spend so much time pushing back on change in conflict. And then eventually you have to process through that if you just start with the processing, you'll discover way sooner, the changes, okay? It's not going to be that difficult, it's not going to be that painful, it may be needed. I'm not saying all change is good. I'm not saying all change is needed. But if you will start to gain quality perspective on it, and embrace working through it, then what you can discover is, you know how to handle it. Or you're better prepared on how to handle it.

So these are things you need to do if you're going to build up resilience, all of these things are going to help you build up emotional intelligence. What am I mean by that? The more you're able to emotionally tackle situations instead of self protecting, instead of negative self talk, instead of telling yourself you're not good enough, instead of telling yourself, you're never going to be able to do this, you're going to fail at this miserably. People are gonna think you're stupid, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. Instead of doing all that stuff, you start to grow. In emotional intelligence, you start to grow in understanding, I'm okay. This isn't my worth. This doesn't define me. This doesn't say who I am to the world. I'm not concerned about what people think I'm not concerned about opinions of those who are unhealthy. I not worried about looking stupid to anyone, the more you continue to work through this process, the more you continue to build up your own emotional intelligence. The more you do that, the easier walking through difficult situations or conflict or change will be in the future. All right. Next thing, what do we do to create a sustainable plan for this new year? Well, the first thing that we want to do is we want to set realistic expectations. I will tell you, resilient people, people with a character of resiliency, they set realistic expectations. I just talked about one of those, one of the things you can do in this year is expect changes Kelvin, things are going to change, you're going to experience change, this whole year is not going to be the same. I can promise you that by the way, we're, we're in 2024 We got an election coming up, promise, things are gonna get stupid, the things are going to change, conflict is going to happen, uncertainty is going to happen. What do we do about it? The sooner you can start to set realistic expectations, things may not go the way that I think they should. People may not do the things I think they should. My job may have some bumps on the road, I may face some team member conflict, I might have some conflict with my employer. I'm the employer, I may have some, you know, team members that make really bad choices in situations. Some clients may drop us, we may pick up more clients than we felt we were prepared for. Whatever it is, the more that you can start to set realistic expectations in your life, the more sustainable you can be in how you handle your life. What do I mean by that? Well, the more you're prepared for things to go away, you're we're not wanting them to expecting them to, the easier it is for you to roll into how you deal with that change, the easier it is for you to roll into what you're going to do about it, the easier it is for you to kick back the negative self talk and start getting quality perspective, there's a whole lot of stuff you can do.

That is going to make your year easier because you've set the realistic expectations, set realistic expectations on on when you where you think you're gonna see problems. Take a hard look at your life and go this is probably where change is coming. This is probably where I'm gonna experience some things. So set realistic expectations. Start incorporating new thinking habits into your life, daily. Every day when you wake up in the morning, now I will tell you something that is good to do. Now, for me, prayer is my first thing. But for some folks journaling is incredibly, you know, positive for them to get a bunch of negative crap or just thoughts out of their, their minds. My wife is a huge fan of the book The artists way that kind of teaches you how to teaches you all kinds of stuff. But one of the big things in there is doing these what they call mourning pages of doing a brain dump of just getting everything out of your brain that's in there, no matter what it is clear your brain out so that you can start facing your day in a more positive way. That's a great thing to do. It's a great thing to get a bunch of junk out of your head right now for me, I like to do it through prayer. But so for some people, they're bright means work differently. You know, you, those of you that are more artistic, it's might work out better for you to start writing that stuff down journal this stuff, get it out of your head, right? Put a new thinking habits, start with the gratitude that we talked about in the last episode, start with a positive thing. Start with tackling those lies with with the truth by finding out why am I telling myself this line, here's the truth, tackle those things on a daily basis, even write it down, make a list of the things that you're planning on doing today that's going to create new thought patterns. Right? This just becomes habit force app, and it's not 21 days, it's 90 days, that's going to create that habit for you, by the way, start doing it list those things out, think through how am I going to be more positive? How am I going to face challenges in a better way? How am I going to get rid of fear? How am I not going to worry about people's opinions about me list all of those things out and start doing them every day? Multiple times a day, what you will discover is they will become force a habit. It is not as difficult for me in my life now to overcome the lies in my head. Because I know what to do when they crop up as question. I have a force of habit process. It is funny to me that every once in a great while I'll have a lie that will linger. It'll keep going and then I'll go whoa. Why would I shut that thing down? I didn't recognize it was what do I do? Squash it? Get rid of it. Oh, God, move on. So start implementing that start putting in incorporating new thinking habits, but do it daily? Also, what does it look like to start having long term vision in areas of your life? What does it look like to have long term growth vision? In the areas you're struggling? How do we keep this momentum going? You know, it's funny people do multiple necks of lifes. And people go, why would somebody come back? Did they not get fixed the first time. It's not about fixing somebody. It's about learning where you are the things that are holding you back the the lies you tell yourself the you know all of these amazing things in Next-Level Life that how you make decisions, your decision making process. And then learning how to overcome those things and take your life to the next level. That's why we call it the next level. Here's the deal. There's 700. Next levels, you can always grow and do better.

And when you overcome the stuff that you're experiencing right now an amazing thing happens, your mind is clear to see the things that you haven't been seeing. Your mind is now open and ready to recognize where you are, you definitely bumped up your life, you've definitely stepped up, you've taken life to the next level or a next level. And for some people, a few next levels. But now you're at a place where it's like Okay, what else am I missing? What else can I do better? How else can I make my life better and get rid of some of this junk and, you know, or, or bad decision making or plateaus in my life or just not having good relationships? Right? That's what happens in your brain. You start to see, oh, there's so much more I can do. So start having some long term vision thinking of what would it look like for me to continue to grow in this area of change? What would it look like for me to continue to grow in this area of battling lies with the truths? What would it look like for me to continue to grow in this area that I need to fix for me fill in the blank? What would that look like and start setting vision to it, start setting some goals. I need to do these types of things to continue to do that. One thing I used to do. I still do it to this day. But something I used to do in my younger years is when I saw something that I was afraid of. And I mean just scared to do it. I would tell myself, I was going to do it until I was no longer afraid. That's how I became a public speaker. That's how I've been somebody who teaches for the last 20 some years, I don't know how many years now. 28, nine year I don't know. That's how I became a leader is I started putting myself in situations that were so uncomfortable for me until I was no longer uncomfortable. Didn't mean that I was comfortable. But I was no longer uncomfortable. And then I just kept getting better and better and better at it. That's how I do what I do. Right is I look at the fear and I go face the fear. You're standing on a two foot stump jump, it's gonna be okay. It's not a 10 foot stump. It's not a 20 foot stump, it's two feet. Jump, you're gonna be okay. And even if you get a little hurt, you're still going to be okay. Face your fears, put some long term vision in place and knock it out of the park. Folks, I hope this has helped you with all this information. I hope that you're listening to this and going these are things I have got to put in place. I want a better year. I want this year to be a better year and yes, we got crappy stuff happening in the world that's probably going to make it more difficult But how do you handle it? How do you lead your family through this? How do you lead yourself through this routine? What do you do? How do you get more positivity in your life? Well, for me, I think you need to go through these steps. I think you need to focus on what it's like to make better thinking patterns in your life, to get rid of the negativity, and start pumping in positive self talk positive processes, positive answers, positive understandings of how to overcome the conflict in your life.

So I encourage you to follow these steps. Speaking of thinking, once again, my great transition here as a longtime, small business owner, myself, I get it. Running your own show means wearing a gazillion hats. One minute, you're crunching numbers, the next year solving a team issue, and the next year working hard to keep customers happy. It is a roller coaster I get it. Well, here's a thought. Have you ever noticed how understanding yourself a bit better, can make all of this well, simpler. That's where self awareness steps in. It's like having a secret weapon that helps you tackle those everyday challenges with a bit more ease and a lot less stress. Imagine knowing exactly what makes you tick, what fires up your team, and how to keep your cool even when things get hectic. That's the power of self awareness. It's not just good for you. It's great for your business. And guess what? You can dive deeper into this at the next level leadership live event happening April 17. Through the 19th in Franklin, Tennessee, it is the perfect place to explore how self awareness can transform your business and make your life considerably easier. So why not join us? Sign up now at ChrisLocurto.com/events. Remember, that's April 17 through the 19th. Visit ChrisLocurto.com/events To take advantage of early bird pricing, folks, I really hope that we get to see you there. Well, that's all the time we have for today. I hope you have enjoyed this. This is something that is obviously something that touches our hearts something that we're passionate about. So I hope you take this information as always change your leadership, change your business, change your life. And join us on the next episode.