Anxiety is usually caused not by external factors but by our own internal thoughts. One of the most effective ways to turn your negative thinking off is through storytelling. Jeffrey Saad talks about the third element in the Circle of Control to emphasize how to get rid of repetitive, unhealthy thoughts that lead to victim identity, limiting beliefs, and self-sabotage. He also explains how connecting positive thoughts to powerful feelings can manifest the best future you really wanted to achieve. Learn how to stop stress and negativity in their tracks to pave the way to a more joyful and empowered you.
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Free Up 30% Of Your Time And A Lot Of Anxiety
Welcome back to the circle. It’s so good to have you. As a chef, I always want to turn everything into a recipe. As a recap, the recipe for a great life is a combination of the reduction, your personal constitution, the circle and storytelling. The Reduction which is the name of the book that my partner Steve Shaw and I wrote. It’s coming out in the spring is all about getting rid of the water in your life if you will. It’s like when I’m in the kitchen making a stock. You boil it down. You get rid of all the water and the non-flavorful stuff and you’re left with this rich, delicious, intense beautiful broth and that’s symbolic to me of life.
If you get that stuff that’s weighing you down out of your life and you condense it down to the stuff that matters. Not only do you save a ton of time, but you become very relaxed. That’s where the anxiety lives in that extra stuff, in trying to just do more and more and ending up with less and less. The personal constitution is your internal compass to achieve that. I’ve talked about all these things in past episodes but what I want to focus on is storytelling.
How Storytelling Affects Your Thoughts
The third thing is the circle, so the reduction, your personal constitution, the circle of control, and then storytelling. What is storytelling? It should be something that happened in the past and ideally something good to put a smile on your face, help someone else just to remember, “That was great,” then you come right back to the present. What storytelling is damaging and it is amazing. Most of these episodes come from my deep love of somebody in my life. It could even be a stranger. You see people suffering. You see people suffering unnecessarily and that is my mission, to get rid of that suffering because most of it is self-inflicted.
What storytelling shouldn’t be is something in the future unless it’s positive. It shouldn’t be something negative because first of all, it doesn’t help you. Second of all, it doesn’t help anyone around you. It definitely doesn’t attract people to you other than the people that are glad you’re suffering and glad you’re telling negative stories because it makes them feel better. That’s a terrible thing to say and a terrible way to be but we all know there are people like that. It’s not even their fault. That’s just human nature. Comparison is the thief of joy. If I can say, you’re worse off than me then somehow, I feel better. Not me for sure but I understand why some people operate that way.
All you have to do is say to yourself, “Have I said this more than once?” If you’ve said it more than once, it’s now a story. The challenge with that story is every time you say it, you’re just reinforcing it. What’s even more amazing, for anybody who believes in the power now, I talked about Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now all the time. Everything happens in the now. Even the future happens in the now because there’s no such thing as the future. It’s always the now. Tomorrow is nothing more than the now when tomorrow comes. It doesn’t exist until it’s happening.
The negative storytelling is just taking your energy and projecting things that aren’t even real yet. I call it Pre-TSD. There’s post-traumatic stress syndrome from something that happened, but so many people create pre because they’re worrying about things that don’t even exist. These fictional enemies, these stories that aren’t even real. I’ve always told good stories to myself. I’m a hypocrite. I’m saying don’t tell but I tell good ones.
The amazing thing is that almost everything has come true. From a young teenager even, I just expected the best. Believe me, I was not popular in high school. I had a weird upbringing, a terrible mother, and horrible stuff. It wasn’t like it was some natural default but I was determined to say, “This is the good that’s going to happen.” My sisters always make fun of me because they say, “He doesn’t want to get married, that’s why he’s made this impossible list for a wife.” Guess what? Nadia, the woman of my dreams, the love of my life for 33 years meets everything on that list.
Most storytelling comes from the uneasiness between where you are, where you want to be, and who you want to be with. Share on XYou tell those good stories and it comes true. What’s amazing is that people keep repeating this process, as my partner, Steve Shull, always says, “Thought is the moment of possibility. The action is the moment of truth and the storytelling is the moment of escape.” That is not the circle you want to live in. That’s what happens. Instead of somebody having a thought, “Here’s a possibility. I’m going to do this to bring that to fruition.” They go to the third one, “He probably doesn’t even want to do it with me. She probably doesn’t even want to invest. It’s such a hard business.”
You start with all the reasons that, whatever it is, can’t happen or that person you want to date or whatever it might be. You get caught into this loop. It kills me because if you’re reading this, you know how much I adore you, but there’s this person in my life that has a son that’s going through a transition. This person is focusing on how it’s affecting them instead of just stopping and saying, “What does he need? Where is he at? This is not about me.”
When you start telling stories about this person, “He’s not even the same person anymore or I can’t believe he doesn’t care about the family or whatever it might be.” All storytelling. It’s doing damage to this person I care about, but it’s all doing damage to the son because he’s thinking, “You just don’t get it.” That just digs in the damage deeper. Trying to control other people with the storytelling is one of the most damaging things.
What we all need to do is just say, “What do I want to change in my life?” Most storytelling comes from this uneasiness between where you’re at, where you want to be or you want to be with. If you want to get rid of the storytelling, replace it with clarity on what you want to change then the actions you need to take. It sounds so basic and obvious but yet it is mind-blowing how many people can’t get out of the other loop. I have close friends that for literally decades have been sharing the same stories with my wife and I and yet nothing changes but the storytelling continues. They’re manifesting that.
Stop Expecting The Best And Look For Solutions
That’s why stopping the storytelling is so important because when you stop telling stories, what happens is a few things. One, it rewires your brain. If you’re not telling negative stories and you’re expecting the best and reacting well to the worst. You start to look for solutions instead of problems. You put on a different pair of glasses, you start to see the good in the world and in yourself. You become an optimist. “Not an optimist. Jeffrey, you’re such a naive guy. Real things happen in the world. If we’re negative about it then we’re not disappointed when it comes true.”
I hope none of you think that way because I have heard that justification for not being an optimist. You can’t achieve anything in this world if it doesn’t start with the belief in a thing. If it doesn’t start with believing that it can be achieved. Becoming an optimist is a good thing. I love Becoming Supernatural. It is by Joe Dispenza. It’s one of my favorite books. It’s in my list of rereads if you will. It comes from the Bible of my life. These guides, these references that I keep re-reading the highlights and keep checking myself. I always say this, I make mistakes constantly. Everything I preach and talk about, I violate at some point because we’re human beings.
Connect Your Thoughts To Positive Stories
I can say with pride that I get better every day, every month, and every year. Even when I have a setback, I landed at a higher place. The second thing is, per Joe Dispenza, when you connect that thought, that positive story if you will or that positive expectation to a feeling. That’s what helps manifest it. It’s not just positive thinking, “I know everything’s going to be great. I’m off to my day.” Everything sucked. What happened? It’s like in my morning meditations. I start by breathing, taking the energy through my body, feeling my body purge any gray air if you will, any negativity, any weight and the anxiety and then I start to literally picture the future.
My family is sitting around a pool in the South of France somewhere. The kids with their kids. I’m teaching them how to cook. My wife and I are dancing around and having fun. I see it so clearly to the point where I start to feel it so deeply. I’ve even cried in my meditation. Please don’t judge me, but it’s true. When you connect that thinking to a feeling, the universe, your body, the world doesn’t know that it doesn’t exist just like when you think about something happy. You smile. You feel your body fill up with joy.
Drop The Negative To Start Attracting The Right People
It didn’t even happen yet but you’re just connecting that feeling to the excitement of it. You can trick the universe if you will. Instead of tricking it, I should say become in line with it, which is the third thing you get. I’m telling you this from experience. When you start only thinking about positive things, telling positive stories, dropping the negative script that you’ve written for yourself. It attracts the right people into your circle or into your life. For anybody who remembers what a radio is, think about radio frequencies. You connect with the frequency that you are most aligned with.
I just know it and I believe it. As a realtor, I always have great clients. I love my clients. They’re happy to pay me a fair fee. Other realtors tell horror stories of, “Clients are so bad. This business is so hard. I can’t get paid.” Why is it that one of us is having a very different experience than the other one? It’s the energy you choose to connect with. You will attract the right people into your life personally and professionally when you have those positive thoughts and expectations. You just free up so much time.
You will attract the right people into your life, personally and professionally, when you have positive thoughts and expectations. Share on XThe storytelling is exhausting and it is just you potentially not wanting to face what’s troubling you. The first step is to catch yourself doing it or it’s a great idea to ask someone that you’re comfortable with or multiple people to remind you when you’re doing it, when you’re starting to tell negative stories and repeating the same stories. Believe me, some of your friends will be thrilled that you asked them to tell you because they don’t want to hear it again.
What it does as you probably have experienced if you’re that person, is it starts to become your identity. That’s what happens with therapy and people that are going backwards to find the answers. It becomes your identity and as crazy as it is, as Eckhart Tolle says people get very comfortable with their negative story and their hate to say it, but they’re victim identity because it’s just what they know. It takes courage to stop that. If therapy is working for you, I’m not saying stop it. What do I know? All I’m saying is, if you haven’t, you just have to ask yourself. Since I started therapy or whatever it is. How much better has my life gotten? What has changed? What stories am I no longer telling?
If that’s happening, then great. Keep it up, but otherwise save yourself some money and even more time. Instead of going backwards to find solutions, say, “This is my life. My life starts now. What can I do starting now that will be the opposite of the negative storytelling and that will get me closer to where I want to be and how I want to live?” Another thing is just like this person in my life with their son. Keep asking yourself, what else could it be? Look to justify the other person’s case if you will. What are all the good reasons or the opposite of the negative things you’re thinking of for this person’s behavior or what’s going on.
Turn your concerns into questions. Say “What do they need from me?” instead of “What do I need from them?” Share on XThe simplest example is, he’s not calling me back. Maybe he’s busy working. Maybe he doesn’t feel good. Maybe he’s in the middle of something else or he lost his phone or he just needs some space so that he can give you what you deserve. That’s a way better way to look at it than, “They must be mad at me. They must not carry anymore. They don’t get it.” Think about it, we always start telling stories.
It’s amazing how many people have told me a story like that and I say, “Did you ask that person?” You’d be amazed how many people say, “No.” The first thing to do is just get the answer, even with real estate negotiations. Realtors will tell me all the time, “My client this, that, and everything.” I said, “Did you just ask them?” They’re like, “Not yet or no or I don’t know. It’s awkward or it’s going to make them uncomfortable.”
I always say turn the concern into a question. “I wonder if they’re having doubts or second thoughts on pursuing the purchase of this home. What do they need for me?” Not, what do I need from them and then just ask, “It seems like there’s a change in your sense of urgency and your behavior. Have you decided maybe this isn’t the right home or the right time? What can I do to help?” That’s very different than wondering what they may be thinking and then. Even worse, taking actions based on what you think they might be thinking. Now you’re trying to solve a problem that doesn’t even exist, which gets things even more complicated.
Episode Wrap-up And Closing Words
That’s it. This is a short one but I had been thinking about that lately. I hope you can only tell good stories slowly. Remember, it’s all about kindness and just try to get a little bit better every day, every week. We’re not here to change the world overnight. No big promises. Only a little bit better, a little more piece, and a little more joy each day. Thank you so much for reading.