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CHAPTER 12
Energize

Positivity Opens the Doors to Our Destinations

When you wish upon a star . . .

Now that you've defined the what for you want to refocus your time and energy on, let's consider the “how” of dedicating yourself to the daily pursuit of those life-regenerating goals. I've already revealed that I'm a Disney geek. One of my favorite Disney movies is the classic Pinocchio. Every time I watch it, I still choke up a little at the song When You Wish Upon a Star. To this day, it inspires me. It reminds me to imagine. It encourages me to believe.

Without singing the song to you, the essence of it, what really matters, is that to open doors of possibility and opportunity, do more than “wish” upon a star. Instead, dream. Be a dreamer. And, believe in your dream and believe in yourself. Let your imagination define you. Most importantly, transcend the acts of wishing upon a star. Anyone can do that. It's those whose dreams and imagination become so vivid on the inside that they influence the outside world around them and reshape their destiny and those whom they touch.

I absolutely love the message of believing in our power to fulfill our dreams, and especially the emphasis on the importance of our hearts being in them. That's another way of saying they are our authentic, self-determined aspirations. I also love the notion that good things can come to us unexpectedly, and that the world is not out to get us; that there is a force of good operating in the universe. But it's more than just having hope. I also believe that we must not rely on wishing and believing in fate as the route to achieving our dreams. Once you have a dream, shape it, stoke it, bring it to life and let it flourish. This is your power. This is your gift.

Dreaming is just the spark of achieving; the burning fire is fanned by the positive energy we bring to our pursuits and share with those around us.

Dreaming is just the spark of achieving; the burning fire is fanned by the positive energy we bring to our pursuits and share with those around us.

I readily admit that I am no an expert about how the universe works, but I do believe in the power of positive thinking. You've probably heard some form of a popular quote, often credited to Henry Ford, that goes something like this: If you think you can or if you think you can't, you're right.¹

The message that the way we think is the key determinant of our success was popularized by Wallace Wattles in his 1910 book, The Science of Getting Rich.² He famously wrote:

THOUGHT is the only power which can produce tangible riches from the Formless Substance. The stuff from which all things are made is a substance which thinks, and a thought of form in this substance produces the form.

For a book that's over 100 years old, it continues to have a profound effect on society, in part through more recent motivational writers like Tony Robbins, author of Awaken the Giant Within, and Rhonda Byrne, author of The Secret.

The essence of what these modern motivators share can still be found in Wattles' words, “A man's way of doing things is the direct result of the way he thinks about things.”

Of course, we've all heard the advice that we should think positively, but it's a whole lot easier said than done. And that's in part because we know we can't just think outcomes into being. That's how the power of positive thinking is sometimes portrayed, and we rightfully roll our eyes. Wattles himself stressed the doing that our thinking influences, and that part of his message has sometimes been overlooked.

We may also push back about thinking positively because we see ourselves as realists, and after all, lots of bad things happen in the world, and to us and our loved ones. Our minds also naturally put more emphasis on bad than good.

Psychologists and neurobiologists have found that a negativity bias is hardwired into our brains. We remember negative experiences, and the negative aspects of experiences that are a combination of good and bad, more vividly. Whatever unpleasant thoughts, emotions, and difficult sensations are involved in an experience—such as if we overstrain a muscle during a workout that was otherwise wonderfully energizing—have a greater and lasting effect on our psychological state than neutral or positive experiences.³

Why is this? One idea is that reacting more strongly to things that hurt us was good for our survival. This is backed up by the fact that we react to negative stimuli faster.⁴ An intensity of focus on and quick reaction to threats was important when we lived out on the open savanna surrounded by wild animals. But in modern life, it can blind us to good things happening and opportunities we can seize. That not only means we miss lots of opportunities; it can also lead us to adopt a generally pessimistic view of life and construct a dispiriting story of the nature of our lives.

Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman explained this in his 2010 TED Talk,⁵ “The Riddle of Experience versus Memory.”

“There is an ‘experiencing self' who lives in the present and who knows the present. And then there's ‘the remembering self,' the person who keeps score and maintains the story of our lives,” he says.

How we feel about the experiences we have in the moment and how we remember the experiences are very different, with only about a 50 percent correlation. Kahneman illustrates this point with the story of a man who experienced a “glorious” performance of a symphony. At the end of the performance, this person quite emotionally recalled one moment of a “dreadful screeching sound,” that “ruined the whole experience.” Kahneman points out that it was really only the memory of the experience that was ruined. “He had the experience. He had 20 minutes of glorious music. They counted for nothing.”

This is another reason that training our minds to focus on the present moment is so important—it allows us
to see the good along with the bad.

Training our minds to focus on the present moment is so important—it allows us to see the good along with the bad.

Positivity Does Not Mean Denial

A common criticism of the advice to cultivate positive thinking is that it encourages us to turn a blind eye to problems and to deny our pain, frustration, or anger. This is an unfortunate misunderstanding. The explanation of a positive mindset on the website⁶ for Martin Seligman's Positive Psychology Program at the University of Pennsylvania clarifies that positive thinking

. . . is not about being constantly happy or cheerful, and it's not about ignoring anything negative or unpleasant in your life. It's about incorporating both the positive and negative into your perspective and choosing to still be generally optimistic.

It's about acknowledging that you will not always be happy and learning to accept bad moods and difficult emotions when they come.

Above all, it's about increasing your control over your own attitude in the face of whatever comes your way. You cannot control your mood, and you cannot always control the thoughts that pop into your head, but you can choose how you handle them.

You cannot control your mood, and you cannot always control the thoughts that pop into your head, but you can choose how you handle them.

The site also points out the incredibly wide-ranging benefits of cultivating positivity. A highly selective list includes that positive thinking:

increases productivity

decreases burnout

leads to better assessments of us by our employers

increases creativity

improves our overall psychological well-being

It's also great for our physical health. The site reports that,

According to the experts at the Mayo Clinic, positive thinking can increase your lifespan, reduce rates of depression and levels of distress, give you greater resistance to the common cold . . . improve your cardiovascular health and protect you from cardiovascular disease.

How can we not want to be more positive!

Stanford Professor Carol Dweck⁷ has studied the role of one's mindset in success. She distinguishes between a “fixed mindset” and a “growth mindset.”⁸ Individuals with fixed mindsets, she explains, view their skills as constant personal traits and they tend to take setbacks hard and to judge themselves harshly, whereas people with growth mindsets view their skills as malleable abilities that can be improved.

We want to cultivate a positive growth mindset. That will allow us to pursue our purpose with passionate energy. Intentional positivity is not naïve; it is life-transforming. It allows us to see the good in the bad, and to use it to succeed despite setbacks.

Intentional positivity is not naïve; it is life-transforming. It allows us to see the good in the bad, and to use it to succeed despite setbacks.

We might tend to think that we are just born with a certain temperament, that we're either a natural optimist or are a pessimist, and there's not much we can do if we're a pessimist. But brain science has shown otherwise. We can learn not to close our eyes to opportunity. Yes, the negativity bias is built into our brains, but we can teach our brains to override it. We can cultivate a positive mindset. We can actually modify our brains.

Growing a New Brain

In his 1890 book The Principles of Psychology, Harvard psychologist William James wrote, “In most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.” This is believed to be the first statement in modern psychology that one's personality becomes fixed at a particular point in life.⁹ That belief held sway for decades. But a host of more recent research has shown that our brains are not, in fact, just fixed at some point. They are constantly changing, and we can, to some degree, guide how they change by how we think.

Thought changes structure.

“Thought changes structure,” observed psychiatrist Norman Doidge,¹⁰ in his book The Brain that Changes Itself. The more you train your brain, the more you reshape it. Essentially, the brain is capable of re-engineering and we are the engineers.

To take good advantage of this plasticity of the brain, as it's called, we have to direct our thoughts with intention. Otherwise, we'll just fall back into ruts of automatic thinking.

As Deborah Ancona, a professor of management and organizational studies at MIT, shared in an interview,¹¹ “We . . . develop neural pathways, and the more we use those neural pathways over years and years and years, they become very stuck and deeply embedded, moving into deeper portions of the brain.” Those established thought patterns make it “hard to break free of them.” Tara Swart, a senior lecturer at MIT, illuminated why we do so in her book Neuroscience for Leadership:¹² “Our brain is ‘inherently lazy' and will always ‘choose the most energy efficient path if we let it.'” The established path is the easy route.

Over time, our neural programming creates a series of mental models that help us navigate our lives. The clearest explanation of them I found comes from entrepreneur and author James Clear:¹³ “Mental models guide your perception and behavior. They are the thinking tools that you use to understand life, make decisions, and solve problems.”

They can be hugely helpful, allowing us to make quick decisions in circumstances that are familiar, for example. But if we let them, they will essentially dictate how we think about and react to people, things, and events. For instance, my immediate eye-rolling reaction to the description of Dr. Rao as a happiness guru resulted from a model I'd constructed that suggested I should be cynical about any such characterizations. That was because I had read so much unfounded and misleading writing by people hyped as gurus. It was only because I was researching this book, and his TED talk had been highly recommended, that I went ahead and watched it.

We can't stop our brains from constructing these ways of thinking, but thankfully, we can train them to construct new ones, which unlocks new vistas of possibility. As James Clear notes, “Learning a new mental model gives you a new way to see the world.” Research has proven that with conscious effort to retrain our brains, we can accomplish amazing changes.

“Learning a new mental model gives you a new way to see the world.”

We can increase our intelligence (IQ).

We can become more emotionally intelligent.

We can recover from certain types of brain damage.

We can unlearn destructive or unproductive behaviors, values, and habits.

We can also make positive thinking a mindset.

Martin Seligman's Positive Psychology program site offers a wealth of suggestions for ways to do this, and I encourage you to consult it. Here, I'll just offer a few of the methods that I've found most helpful and enjoyable.

Make a list of everything you're thankful or grateful for.¹⁴ Take a moment and think about everything in your life today or the experiences, people, or things that have helped you. This is such a simple exercise, but it has a profound effect on your outlook.

As I was writing this chapter, I was flying from San Francisco to Minneapolis for a special two-day event that I had the opportunity to keynote (both days!). Upon landing, the person to my left was passing her unfinished glass of water to the flight attendant over me, with my laptop open. . . I think you know where this is going. During the would-be baton pass, someone missed, and the result was water all over my keyboard.

As a geek, I did all the instant things one can do. Long story short, the keyboard failed later that evening. Since I was traveling, and this chapter was due, I made the call to get a new laptop. When I showed up at the local Apple store, I was asked why I was buying it and why I didn't need the usual setup help. I explained the circumstances as best I could to a stranger who I'm not sure really wanted to know the answer to her question. But then the strangest thing happened.

She listened—with intent and curiosity. At some point, she asked if I practiced “gratitude.” She followed up with, “I could tell you are thankful. I just wondered if you practice it as part of your life.” The answer was at that moment, the only truth I could give her: “It's funny and also wonderful you say that. Yes! I'm learning how to practice it. It's changing my life for the better!” The truth is that I was actually writing this chapter and was delayed with the need for a new system. The point of this—I had just finished writing a personal list of everything I was grateful for. And, for some awesome and inexplicable reason, the person who helped me picked up on it. So, write this list. Now and then do it with regularity, perhaps schedule once per month.

Start every day with reciting some positive affirmations. Inspirational quotes are great for this. I've started the chapters of this book with some of my favorites. Spend some time to gather a set of your own. You'll find the process uplifting and then reap the rewards every day from now on.

Use your mindfulness. We can apply our new mindfulness to catching ourselves in the act of being negative, taking conscious charge of how we interpret situations. We'll get better at this over time by asking ourselves, when we're starting to feel negativity:

Am I really in the moment?

Am I finding the good in the moment?

What positives can I choose to focus on?

M.J. Ryan, author of Attitudes of Gratitude, makes an interesting observation about how this boosts our spirits. “Where we notice what's right instead of what's wrong, it makes us feel . . . that we have everything we need at least in this moment.” He advises to always ask ourselves, “What's right with this wrong?”¹⁵

The Power of Positive Doing

The power of positive thinking comes first from how it trains our minds to be more open and alert to opportunities, and then from how it guides our actions. I want to be clear that I'm not advocating that it's a mystical matter of the universe rewarding us for our positive thoughts. As I said, I'm no expert on how the universe works, so it's not my place to debunk that notion. What I do think is important is not leaving one's destiny up to such fortuitous intervention. If it comes, wonderful! But we shouldn't let hoping for it mean we are waiting for it. Remember, Wallace Wattles wrote that “[a] man's way of doing things” follows from the way one thinks; the true power of positivity is in what it spurs us to do.

Much has been written about the Law of Attraction, a centuries-old precept that suggests “like attracts like.” The Law is said to have originally been taught by the Buddha.¹⁶ He wanted his followers to understand that “what you have become is what you have thought.” The emphasis in the Buddhist teaching is on how we have the power within our own mind, within ourselves, to translate our thoughts, and actions, into reality.

I'm sure we've all experienced how our thinking can seem to conjure up its own reality, for good and for bad. For example, if you're attempting to paddleboard for the first time, and you think you're going to fall, you will. Happened to me! And I even cracked a rib as a result!

On the flip side, I'm sure you've experienced wanting something so badly that you've thought and thought about it, and maybe even visualized it showing up, and then it did! Maybe that was the result of your positive thoughts, or maybe of sheer luck. About that, we can't really know.

But what we can know is that expecting something to happen just because we want it to, and will it to, is a high-stakes game of chance. The much better odds come from visualizing and thinking positively about what you want to happen and then putting in the work to manifest your vision.

I want to strike a careful balance here. It's heartening to think that everything you want or need can be satisfied by believing in an outcome, repeatedly thinking about it, and maintaining positive emotional states to attract the desired outcome. And there may be something to that. But what I think is more compelling about the Law of Attraction is what it says about our own power within to bring either the positive or the negative into our lives and the world around us.

Have you ever been out somewhere, and someone, for some strange reason, catches your eye? You look and suddenly make eye contact and then quickly look away. You look around, away, down—but there's something pulling you, you can't help but to look again; you have to see if that eye contact will happen again. And then it does?! Whenever that's happened to me, I've thought that perhaps that person and I are meant to know one another, and maybe even to accomplish something together. I'm not without all sense of forces beyond our knowing being at play in the universe.

But when it comes to the Law of Attraction, I'm more interested in how we generate effects on others, which then rebound to us. Whether we are happy or angry, frustrated, or anxious, we emanate our feelings outward to those we're with, even if we're trying to hide them. Human beings are exquisitely finely tuned when it comes to perceiving emotion. That's why if you're feeling particularly happy, even if you're not smiling or showing it obviously in some way, someone might tell you that you're glowing. If you're upset, those around you will pick up on that, which is why people often ask us what's the matter even when we think we're putting on a great poker face. The emotional tone of our thoughts radiates from us whether we know it or not. Others pick up on it and that shapes our interactions and can have a big impact on what happens in our lives.

We can either allow our thoughts and feelings to be impulsive reactions or we can be intentional about what we're broadcasting.

Whether we are happy or angry, frustrated, or anxious, we emanate our feelings outward to those we're with, even if we're trying to hide them.

As for luck, I'm a big fan. But I subscribe to the old saying, “He who is lucky realizes that ‘luck' is the point where preparation meets opportunity,” often credited to Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger (4 BC–65 AD).¹⁷ Some fascinating recent research has backed this up.

To a large extent, people make their own good and bad fortune.

Psychologist Richard Wiseman conducted a 10-year study into the nature of luck entitled, “The Luck Factor.”¹⁸ Wiseman found that, to a large extent, people make their own good and bad fortune. In his work, he found that it is possible to enhance the amount of luck that people encounter in their lives.

Lucky people generate their own good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.

That process of transformation is best done through focused effort. I love a saying about this attributed to Thomas Jefferson: “I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.”

If you wait for the universe to deliver what you're seeking, you are not taking control of your destiny. I, too, want to believe that my positivity will shower me with rewards. I just don't believe that working to shape one's destiny cancels out opportunities for such benevolence or for serendipity.

You are the architect of your life. You have to design it, plan it, and build it into what you want it to be. Our powers to do so, when we think positively, are truly astonishing.

A New Way to Sing

Allow me to share a wonderful and inspiring story about the power of positivity and how profoundly we can reshape our neural pathways.

You are the architect of your life. You have to design it, plan it, and build it into what you want it to be. Our powers to do so, when we think positively, are truly astonishing.

It's the story of Mandy Harvey.¹⁹ I was first introduced to this lovely young woman when she performed during the 2017 season of America's Got Talent.²⁰ Harvey was one of five artists that season to earn what's called “The Golden Buzzer.” Each of the judges only gets one “Golden Buzzer” per season and it advances the contestant forward regardless of how the other judges vote.

Just before Mandy's performance, the much-maligned and sometimes cynical judge (and producer) Simon Cowell asked her to share her story. What it took for her to stand on that stage is something I'll never forget.

“What's your name?” Simon asked.

“I'm Mandy Harvey,” she cheerfully responded while motioning her hands just in front of the ukulele she's wearing.

“And, who's this?” He asked while pointing to his left.

“My interpreter,” she responded.

“Okay Mandy, I think I worked this out. So, you're deaf?” he questioned.

“Yes. I lost all my hearing when I was 18 years old,” she explained.

The whole audience sighed.

“Wow.” He paused. “And, how old are you now?”

“29. So, it's 10 years.”

The camera panned to the stage wings where her proud, nervous father was looking on.

“Wow.” Cowell paused again. “Mandy, how did you lose your hearing, if you don't mind me asking?”

“I have a connective tissue disorder, so basically, I got sick and my nerves deteriorated,” she shared.

Simon then asked, “So, you were singing before you lost your hearing?”

“I've been singing since I was 4. So I left music after I lost my hearing. Then I figured out how to get back into singing with muscle memory, using visual tuners and trusting my pitch.”

Judge Howie Mandel then jumped up and exclaimed, “So your shoes are off because you're feeling the vibration, is that how you're following the music?”

“Yeah, I'm feeling the tempo, the beat, through the floor,” she confirmed. She had taught her brain to find a new way to listen to music.

Simon put his hands together as if he was to pray and asked, “Mandy, what are you going to sing?”

“I'm going to sing a song that I wrote called, ‘Try.'”

“Okay. Can you tell us what it's about?” Simon inquired, now resting his chin on his folded hands.

“I want to do more with my life than just give up.”

“After I lost my hearing, I gave up. But I want to do more with my life than just give up.”

At this point the audience roared. Everyone wanted her to do well. But I think part of the thrill was that we all give up sometimes and we all know we should keep going.

Simon sat back, smiled, and said, “Good for you. Good for you. Look, this is your moment and good luck.”

Mandy then turned to the side of the stage and waved for her accompanying musicians, a keyboardist and bass player, to join her. Her father looked on with great concern.

The music started, and then Mandy's angelic voice shocked the audience. It was an unforgettable wow moment. As the camera panned across the audience, many audience members wiped tears from their eyes. When Mandy belted out, “So, I will try!”, the audience and judges leapt to their feet. Her voice trembled as she became overcome with the love . . .

“Honestly, I never think I'm going to be surprised or amazed by people. And then you turn up. Just the fact that you are you.”

The room erupted in a long, standing ovation as Mandy smiled with tears of joy and relief.

After the applause finally died down, Simon sat down and with the biggest grin, said to her, “Mandy, I don't think you're going to need a translator for this.” He then reached over the judge's panel and hit the golden buzzer. The crowd erupted with another standing ovation.

Mandy placed her hands on the side of her face and broke down into a state of elation and disbelief. Her father cupped his hands and placed them over his mouth as he watched.

Golden confetti filled the air and showered Mandy and the stage.

Simon hugged the interpreter.

Mandy's proud father rushed to hug and congratulate her.

Cowell then approached the stage, held her, gave her two thumbs up, looked her in her eyes and told her, “You know, I've done this a long time. That was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen and heard.”

When he sat back down, he left Mandy with these words of appreciation and encouragement: “Honestly, I never think I'm going to be surprised or amazed by people. And then you turn up. Just the fact that you are you. But I think it was your voice, your tone, the song was beautiful . . . congratulations, you are straight through to the live show. Mandy, we found each other.”

I wanted to share this story not only because it's a deeply moving example of how we can retrain our brains. It's also a story of the sheer determination to stay positive in order to pursue one's purpose.

In 2013, Mandy earned the opportunity to sing at the Kennedy Center²¹ as part of a special concert in celebration of the 23rd anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act and National Council on Independent Living Conference.²² There's a moment where she shares a more intimate look at her darker days, when she lost her hearing and how, and when she finally was able to picture her future as a singer and her purpose in returning to it.

When I was losing my hearing when I was in music school, I got really depressed as you could probably imagine. And, I just stopped doing music. I didn't feel the need anymore. I didn't want to anymore. It just didn't feel right. But, every day, I sat in my room by myself. I sang this song over and over and over again. The meaning behind it, I guess it's supposed to be happy, but it's not for me. It's more like, I'm not in that good place yet. I'm not there, but I can see it in the future and I know that I need to smile through this. I need to make it okay. I just want to encourage you . . . there are so many challenges in life that you feel like you can't get over and this is your moment. You can't just let it go because it's difficult. If you have a dream, you do it. If it's different or if it changes, then go around, find a different road, but find the finish line. And, smile through it. It's going to be okay.

If you have a dream, you do it. If it's different or if it changes, then go around, find a different road, but find the finish line.

She then went on to sing a song called Smile, an instrumental piece originally written by Charlie Chaplin in 1936 for the film Modern Times. Later, John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons added lyrics to it, giving the song a sense of melancholy and then optimism. Smile served as the title track to her debut album and her life. The song reminds us that even in the most challenging, darkest or scariest of times, we are faced with an important choice. We either fret, grieve, shut down, or we smile and work our way toward a more productive, promising and rewarding path. I mean, what's the using of crying when a smile can change everything?

“My passion, the whole reason why I sing, is so that I can say, ‘Hey, this is what I've done; I really hope that I can encourage you to do the same.'”

Mandy once told the BBC²³ in its feature on her, “I sing to encourage other people; that's what makes me happy. My passion, the whole reason why I sing, is so that I can say, ‘Hey, this is what I've done; I really hope that I can encourage you to do the same.'”

You did Mandy and you do.

Mandy said that what kept her trying was that she could see being able to sing again in her future. Her story is a stirring testament not only to the power of positivity, but to the power of visualization, the practice of conjuring up a detailed, vivid image of the outcome we want to achieve. As a visual thinker, it's a process I threw myself into as I worked on reigniting my creativity, and it was so inspiring and energizing that I will introduce it to you as the next step in lifescaling. Even those of you who think you're just not the visualization type will find it intensely motivating. Let me show you.