Most people feeling stuck or overwhelmed often push themselves to the limit trying to find a better path to a more fulfilling life. But sometimes, the only key to achieving personal growth is just changing your perspectives and cultivating a positive mindset. Jeffrey Saad presents the many benefits of eliminating negativity and ignoring things out of your control in favor of self-care, self-love, and mindfulness. Sharing inspiring lessons from his career as a realtor and chef, he stresses the value of building relationships, understanding other people’s opinions, and maintaining a healthy work-life balance.
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The Power Of Positive Mindset
Let’s start with a quote. I love great quotes, but what I think most of us hate is people that whip out quotes, but then don’t live by them. It’s, practice what you preach, but a quote can be so inspirational and I have mile-long lists. I’ve told you about my notes and my phone, my constitution, my inspiration, I love my wife, and what I’m grateful for. Then I have another one that’s just quotes because they’re just so powerful.
I mean, a writer once said, “The one that can communicate the most with the least words wins and that’s what quotes do so well.” This one is from Dale Carnegie, “It isn’t what you have, who you are, where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happier and happy. It’s what you think about.” That is exactly the philosophy of my life. I probably annoy a lot of people. I don’t ever try to preach except for a podcast.
Your whole life is determined by what you think. It starts with your thoughts. That’s just the truth. Your thoughts become your feelings. If I’m thinking something dark or sad, then my feelings become sad. Your thoughts affect your feelings, your feelings affect your choices, then your choices affect your actions, and your actions make up your entire life.
How you think does matter, and that’s probably where that whole positive thinking came from, positive thinking by itself is annoying and probably doesn’t work at all but the concept is right because what you let into your mind is so important. I always say, “Be careful to not cross the street and get hit by a car.” People think so many times before doing anything that could have harmed them physically, but it’s amazing how many people will leave their brains wide open.
The circle of control, the circle, the name of this podcast, it is just that simple. Again, it’s my favorite tattoo because whenever I’m in doubt, I glance down and think, “Can I affect this? If I can’t affect it, if it’s outside the circle, I’m done. I’m going to leave it alone. If it’s in the circle and it matters to me, what can I do about it?”
Neighborhood
My wife and I are realtors. I’m also a chef, as you know, lots of different fun things in my life. Today I’m showing a house and it was so interesting because the other realtor and the client were going on and on about all these apps. Citizen and Nextdoor and this and that. Whose white van is that down the street? I’m thinking to myself, “It’s probably somebody’s cleaning lady who’s working their butt off to try to get by in this world and everybody’s on next door thinking there’s some assassin.”
I promise you that by knowing about every possible event in the neighborhood, you will not be happier and you will not be safer. There is no way that by knowing about every single break-in, you have better odds of not being broken into. You have better odds of being super anxious, scared, and unhappy. It’s a funny concept. Ignorance is bliss.
It doesn’t mean you want to be ignorant, but it is incredible. I’ve said a million times with the news, hearing bad stuff, and taking in all this stuff that again is outside the circle of control is not going to help you. What’s in the circle of control? Turn on your alarm when you leave the house or when you go to bed. Make sure that your house doesn’t look it’s vacant and empty on holidays, weekends, or whatever. There are the basic things you can do and then after that, It’s good.
Whatever’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. That’s why I have insurance. I love my life. I wake up so happy and so excited every day. It’s not because I’m some naturally happy guy. It’s I’ve made it a practice. It is so important to make being happy a practice and part of your life, just everything else that you want to be good at or enjoy. I challenge you. Again, if you love your life and you wake up super happy on 15 different neighborhood apps and it was working for you, great. Keep doing it.
Little Moments
For those of you who are, I talked about it in one of the last show, Mo Gawdat’s book, Unstressable. He talks about all these little stressors, the big stressors, the traumas are dangerous and heavy and they hit you hard and all at once but it’s the little things that add up and then finally just break you. It’s important not to think the little things are no big deal because they add up to be a lot.
One of my greatest experiences about seeing the other side of things and trying to understand how little things add up. My good friend, at the time owned four restaurants in San Francisco called The Grove. We had this amazing friendship for 30 years when I opened my first restaurant called Sweet Heat in the Marina of San Francisco. It was such a cool time. You’ve all heard me brag about this, but the local newspaper said, “This guy.” Referring to me, This person I interviewed said, “He took a perfectly shitty neighborhood and ruined it.”
It was an old-school Italian neighborhood in the Marine District of San Francisco and after the earthquake, a lot of people left then it started to gentrify and I had the first restaurant, one of the first new restaurants down there. This guy Ken, came in and said, “Can you help me with my menu?” He had this pizzeria down the street.
I started doing the menu for him and I started doing the menu for the Groves and it was such an amazing experience. He’s such a great guy, such a great restaurateur, but this was one of the experiences. When I started working with him again. This was when my TV show ended and I had more time. Back in 2012 or 2013, I would go up to San Francisco for three, or four days a week. It was my job to turn the Titanic. I had to just turn this ship. It was a great concept and his wife’s this brilliant interior designer.
The places look great and the concepts and locations were good, but the operations were rough. I had to get in there and make it happen. I love doing that because inspiring people makes me so happy. I’ll never forget, “Don’t be efficient with people.” We all want to be efficient with everything in our lives, with people, you can’t beat it.
My big lesson was, that there were ticket times, we call it, how long does it take for the food to come up? You ordered at a counter, and I would say to the cooks and the managers, “What’s the standard? How long should it take for food to hit the table?” Nobody had an answer. That was the first challenge, What gets measured gets done. It’s like everything in life, if you say that you want your life to be different or you want something to happen, start by putting a marker on it. What do I want it to look like?
If you want your life to be different and something to happen, start by putting a marker on it. Share on XWe said, “It shouldn’t take longer than 12 minutes.” That’s what we all agreed upon. Again, I didn’t dictate it. What should this be? What do you think’s realistic? But then, the cooks were struggling in the kitchen. I said, “Let me get in there.” I went in there and I prepped, as a chef, I love doing this anyway, and I’m a total psychotype A personality anyway.
I get in there and I bang out every recipe and I video it so that they can see how to do it exactly right. I see how long it takes for each step. I want to be fair and realistic. I was able to prep this whole day in X amount of hours. In the beginning, I thought, that should be their standard but then I realized that it’s easy for me to walk in there and do it once or a few times, but they have to do it every day all day and they get interrupted by deliveries or by a piece of equipment breaking or an employee being sick.
There’s all these other factors. You can’t just say, “This is the amount of time it should be done in because there are so many other things to consider. Just Mo Gawdat talks about the little mini stressors that can break you, and that’s why the restaurant business is so hard. Nothing is hard, but when you put together a thousand easy things, it’s hard.
That was a good lesson in not trying to dictate just because I could do it today that everyone should be able to do it every day. As we talked about in past episodes, ask yourself, what are these stressors that I can get out of my life? It’s these stressors that start to trigger the unhealthy thinking and then that thinking starts to make you feel bad and the bad feelings turn into bad choices and bad actions.
It’s interesting because as a realtor, I see it all the time. The storytelling, the circle of control, everyone is so focused on what’s outside the circle. So do a little test with yourself, spend the day and just see how many times you can see somebody else doing it or catch yourself doing it. That’s the first step. Just start by saying, “Am I noticing it?” Then you can work on changing it. Again, small changes.
Going To The Other Side
It doesn’t have to be overnight, “My gosh, everything’s going to change now.” Little by little is the key. As we get into the elections and all this stuff, more than ever, I urge everybody, to go to the other side. We’re never going to get anywhere by saying, “You’re an idiot.” “What you think is stupid.” “I’m right.” Everybody’s so determined to be honked down and be in their camp with their team and the other side’s wrong.
No matter what side you’re on, try to just love a little bit. I know it sounds Pollyanna, but if we don’t love and care about each other, we’re never going to solve this gap. It’s an incredible skill. I talked about it in one of the other episodes of The Wright Brothers. Whenever they would fight, they would switch sides. That was their policy. They knew it. “If we’re going to fight, we got to switch sides now and argue the other person’s side.”
That’s I guess the basis of debate school or whatever, a debate team, try to understand the other side instead of your side. It’ll change so much. No matter what it is, it’s the most rewarding thing when you can stop and understand somebody else’s side. Empathy or tactical empathy. There are a million names for it. I saw funny Instagram posts. This guy said, “I’ve learned if I’m empathetic, I can fool people and then I can be the psycho like I want to be and get away with it.”
It’s not about using it as a trick or as a tool, although I’m sure some people do and succeed with it, it’s about when you care and understand the other side, it doesn’t mean you agree, but it’s incredible how it’ll change the relationship and that makes all the difference in the world and we need that more than ever. At the end of the day, my goal is to spread joy in a 20-foot radius wherever I go.
I can’t change the policies in DC. I can’t fix the budget. I can’t stop wars but I can love you, I can be kind to you, I can let you go in the intersection, I can let you in front of me at the grocery store and I can tell you that’s a great outfit if I think it is. Just try to make your day, do something nice, live the life, challenge yourself, and ask yourself, “Are you living the life that you say you want to see everyone else living the way you want the world to be?” Are you practicing that? I think that’s an important part of it.
It’s that thinking to not just accept but embrace and look forward to whatever comes your way. That’s what I’m trying to do more than ever. I’m probably too hard on myself. I think I am because I judge myself and then I stop doing that because that doesn’t help you unless you’re using it positively to learn. I care about practicing what I preach. If you can not only say, this happened, my car broke down, let’s go with something simple.
Instead of just saying, I’m not going to get mad that my car broke down, but truly embrace it like, “Cool, bring it on. I got this.” Maybe while it’s broken down, I’m going to meet somebody, do something, hear something, see something, and have a minute to think that I wouldn’t have otherwise. That negative thing is going to become one of the best things that ever happened to you.
It’s not just about not getting mad. It’s about actually embracing it and even looking forward to it. From a young age, I don’t know where I got it, but I always said, “Bring it on.” No matter what. I say, “Bring it on.” That was my attitude. Life is easy. Everything’s easy. That can be annoying for people. My son will tell you that it was hard and annoying for him sometimes as a child because that was always my attitude.
Starting And Ending Your Day
When that’s the story you’re telling yourself, I always say that anything that’s not happening is a story. Other than this very present moment. If you are going to tell stories, tell good ones. “This is going to turn into this.” It makes a big difference. The other thing that’s made my life great as well that helps with thinking, feeling, choices, and action formula is it’s all about the five to nine.
The day is important, but how do you start your day? I’m calling it Five To Nine, for you, maybe it’s seven to nine. Maybe it’s six to eight but how do you start your day and how do you end your day? As a chef, I can tell you, “A bad bun will ruin a killer burger.” How things are bookended matters. What do you do to start your day? I won’t go into it too much in this one because we talked about that morning routine so much.
How do you end your day? Are you ending your day with too many cocktails and too much Netflix? Are you ending your day with a peaceful walk, a little meditation, and reading a great book? Yes, you should have a cocktail and yes, you should watch Netflix but it’s up to you to decide how much of that you’re doing because again, it’s the way you start and finish your day that’ll frame it and that’ll have you thinking in a better peace of mind.
For me, that’s that personal constitution. We’ll talk about that some more, but I have it written down. Who am I? How am I going to live my life? If you don’t have a filtering system for how you’re going to live your life, then, everything just goes haywire. You need to have some guardrails to decide how you’re going to process what you say yes to, what you say no to, and how you live your life. If you don’t have that, it already gets trickier.
If you do not have a filtering system on how to live your life, everything goes haywire. You need some guardrails to decide how to process what you say and what you do. Share on XI read something else that is great, it said that there are four types of wealth. There’s financial, social, health, and freedom. They say that way too many people trade health and freedom, the last two for the first two, financial and social. I want to be rich and I want to have status, but you don’t want that to be at the cost of your health, your freedom, or your wellbeing.
At 57 now, I remember being younger and I always wanted to be a gazillionaire. Then, all of a sudden, I started just loving the journey of what I was doing. I stopped thinking about money and where it was going to go. I just loved the moment I was in and all those moments added together. All of a sudden I’m 57 and I love my life. We’re very comfortable. Things are great.
Be aware of which of those types of wealth you want because as we all know, all the money in the world is not going to help you if you’re not healthy and all the social status in the world won’t help you if you feel lonely inside. It’s important to be honest with yourself. Ask yourself, “Am I living my best life? I do that in the mornings.
I wake up, I get my espresso and I just say, “Do I love my life? Yes or no?” If the answer is no, “Why not?” “What’s missing?” “Where do I want this to go?” Ask yourself, how many times do you do that? Just take peaceful, quiet time to assess, “Am I on the right track?” It doesn’t matter how fast you’re climbing the ladder if you’re on the wrong wall.
Take the time to stop and say, “Do you know what? It’s time for this ladder to move.” The famous adage, one lumberjack is whipping through, chopping down trees as fast as he can and the other lumberjack disappears for an hour every so often. He ends up getting more done. The guy asked, “How could you get more done?” Of course, the answer is that he was sharpening his saw or his ax.
Expansion Over Happiness
It’s not just about how much you do, but how well you do it and how much you are doing it. That matters so much more than just running full throttle or full speed. Another way to be happy, avoid unhappiness, and be in a good place, is always to choose expansion over happiness. We’re so cliché in the world of what makes you happy, do what makes you happy.
Yes, you want to be happy, of course, but oftentimes happiness comes from being good at what you do or from having greater experiences. Always stop and ask yourself, “Is this going to expand me?” “Is this going to make me more whole?” “Is this going to make me better?” For me, that’s always been the case. That’s why we’ve moved so much and done so many different things.
Always stop and ask yourself if something will expand you and make you better. Share on XI’ve written a cookbook, I’ve had my TV show, I’ve been on competition shows, I’ve been a realtor, and we’ve owned restaurants. As a chef, I’ve done infomercials and TV. Now I’m doing some food critic work here in the Valley for a magazine, and it’s been so joyful. When you have chapters, I think that also keeps your mind fresh and keeps you challenged.
Listen, again, if you wake up and you love punching in, punching out, and going home, more power to you. That’s a great life if you’re happy but I found that by changing things, by loving what I’m doing in the moment and getting better at what I’m doing, all of a sudden you’re enjoying it even more and you’re happier doing it. Then, be okay to tap out. My last restaurant didn’t make it and that was okay.
I still look back and it was the best journey ever, but I’ll never have to die with any would have, should have, or could have. I think that’s an important part of it. We moved about 10 different times, at least. Kids, I used to joke. They’d see me getting a box in the garage, they’d start crying. I’d say, “No, no, I’m just putting some stuff away.” It’s also made their life great.
Episode Wrap-Up
Our daughter, Isabella, still has these amazing friends in San Francisco. From the year we went back and lived up there after being down in LA for 15 years. You embrace it. All these changes make your life fuller and better. In summary, beware of how you think. how you think will affect how you feel, which affects your choices, which affects your actions, which changes your whole life. Have some good feelings. Make some good choices. Cheers.