The World Is Already Negative Enough.. Choose To Be Positive! | Ep 104

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to Never Stop Building, where we discuss all things business, growth and leveling up to become the most elite version of yourself. We're here to challenge fear and shatter doubt. Let's dive in what is up everybody. Welcome back to Never Stop Building. I'm your host, sam Kaufman. As always, incredibly grateful, happy, excited to be here talking with you today.

Speaker 1: 0:28

I always appreciate and enjoy this podcast. This is the thing. This is the thing that I enjoy the most from a content creation perspective, because I feel like it's where I get to be the most open, vulnerable with you. I don't have a 40 second time limit on my delivery of information, which all the other platforms seem to enjoy. Here we are Quick, very short, funny story. I'm recording this episode for the second time. I have no idea what you were supposed to hear on the first recording. I'm sorry, I have no idea what you were not supposed to hear on the first recording, but the recording failed to pick up any audio. This is round two of the same topic, but obviously there is a power greater than myself at work trying to deliver something different from you, and whatever I recorded earlier was not it.

Speaker 1: 1:32

This podcast is about making choices. This episode is 100% about the fact that the choice is yours every day, whether or not you want to leave a positive or negative imprint on the world around you. What is going to be required to leave a positive imprint on the world around you is going to be some choices. What is required to leave a negative impact on the world around you is the absence of choices, which in itself is a choice, but it's more so leaving that negative imprint. And so you maybe think what's in what negative imprint? I'm talking about being hateful, angry, pessimistic, down I'm not saying we don't all get angry, pessimistic or down but projecting that into the world, onto the people around you, to your spouse, to your kids, to your team members, employees if you have them, people that you lead. You have a choice. You have a choice not to imprint that negativity in the world, and a lot of people do.

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And what happens with negativity is negativity gets a lot of short term attention and the person, the people, the negativity in and of itself, it garners a lot of engagement, and not just online, I mean in person too. You see somebody being negative or yelling at the supermarket, at the cash register. You start paying attention. You overhear someone saying thank you so much. Have a nice day. I really you stop listening. We often are so easy and quick to tune out the positive impact we may hear or see and we're so fast to start paying attention to what's negative, because negativity is entertaining.

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Negativity stirs negativity and we all we all deal with it. We all deal with the lingering negativities and fears and doubts, and oftentimes it's we can become susceptible to picking up on other people's negative behavior and then use it to justify becoming negative ourselves, and so often those justified negative moments are actually just projections of how we feel about ourselves. And so, from an empathy perspective, I want to say, like when dealing with somebody who's being angry, negative, hateful, resentful, just overall unforgiving, unloving, unwilling to listen, unwilling to participate, unwilling, you gotta have empathy for this person, because you have no idea what they're going through and 100% it's not about you. It's not about you. There's something that they're dealing with internally that they need to work on, heal from, and maybe something you did or said or maybe you sparked a trigger or awakened a trauma or something you like. I'm not saying that any of us are perfect. Like we hurt people's feelings, like I hurt people's feelings, I make decisions that negative people don't like that negatively impact them. I like we're not perfect as humans, but when somebody is spewing negativity or hate or just downright anger, you have an opportunity to be a positive force for change and imprint on their life and everybody's life around you. And I'll give you an example. Man Like I have somebody who's been trying to hate on me a lot recently and I prayed for that person and I've continued to pray for that person and I will continue to do that. I learned this 10 years ago and I've been doing it for 10 years.

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When I got clean, when I got off heroin and I stopped smoking crack and I became sober because I was gonna die, my first mentor in recovery taught me if you wanna let go of a negative feeling, call them resentments. We work on resentments a lot in recovery. If you want to let go of a resentment, you pray for this person every day until the resentment lifts. And I'm telling you it's taken all of these 10 and a half years to get into a place where my spirit is comfortable doing that for people that are angering me or upsetting me or scaring me, as in the beginning it was so hard. It was so hard to pray for people in that way and so hard to hope genuinely in my heart that good things could come to somebody who wished bad things on me. And today that's not the case. Today, after years of practice and understanding and empathy for the fact that people in that place need prayer and love and help and a hand. They don't need hate and negativity in return, even if they want it, it's just because that's all they're comfortable with. And I learned that 10 and a half years ago. To pray for those people that have that, that are putting that out into the world. Pray for good things to happen to them, to happen for them, their families, their loved ones. Pray for healing for those people. And that practice has changed my life and that's one of the ways that I get to put a positive imprint on the world around me is that there's nothing that you could do outside of directly harming one of my family members. I'm sure I have boundaries and limits, but there's nothing that really you could do that would stop me from putting a positive imprint on the world, and that includes praying for those that are negative.

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You have a choice as to how you react to everything around you. You have a choice to put a smile on. It is a choice to be better today than it was yesterday. It is a choice to post positive content. It is a choice to love people where they're at. It is a choice to deeply and truly want to make a positive impact on the right people. It is a choice to do what you believe to do to be the right thing in your heart. You don't need anybody's permission to do the right thing for you and your family as you see fit in your heart the truth, the true right thing. But that is a choice you have to make. It is a choice to be grateful and look for reasons to be grateful and find gratitude in the face of anything that's standing in your way.

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These things are choices and I believe that the negativity and the anger and the hate that we see so often in the world is a result of people who refuse to make choices, make decisions. The same inability to make a decision to be a better man, a stronger husband, sober, happy, faithful. These things are very hard and most people the world doesn't create and teach that's the route to go for young men or women. That's not the world teaches that negativity is normal. It's the way that the reactions and feelings should judge behavior, and it's untrue. It's untrue Character should judge behavior. Love should judge behavior, love of yourself and the people around you.

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And that's not to say you won't make mistakes. I do, I make mistakes. I hurt people's feelings. I say things and then maybe my mind changes or the information changes. And sometimes when you say things and you change your mind or you do something that's best for you, you're gonna hurt some people. It's understandable.

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You can't make everybody happy ever, but you can. You can make a decision to make a positive imprint on the world around you and you can do that by trying your best to be your best version of yourself on a daily basis. And you won't make a positive impact on everyone. You will make a positive impact on the people that you are supposed to make a positive impact on, and it's not everybody, not everybody's for everybody. Not every time you smile is everyone you smile at going to have their day affected, but I will smile all day long if just one person I interact with is positively affected by that. I will be grateful through anything and everything if it means that I get to come home and be the best dad possible, because I'm in a heart posture of gratitude instead of anger and resentment and fear. I will choose joy in the face of any adversity if it means that I get to be the best husband possible because I'm a joyful man to be around, and it means that when I do suffer from negative feelings and emotions, my wife can support me through it, knowing that joy is on the other side, because I'm typically somebody who finds joy and I can spread that and leave that impact and leave that imprint on the people that I care about the most.

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And that is your job. Your job is to make decisions, and these decisions are hard. They are tough. I know that. I know because I make them all the time. Over the years, the decisions have become harder and harder and harder to make, until you realize that the decisions are easy to make. What's hard is everything between knowing there's a decision to make and not making it, and almost every major hurdle I've had to overcome on the other side of a decision has been because of the length of time between knowing that it needed to happen and taking action on it happening. And so, if we can compress the time between knowing what's right and deciding to do it.

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Knowing that being grateful is the right thing to do, but waiting to find reasons to have gratitude is going to hurt you. Knowing that being joyful is the right thing to do, but intentionally holding on to negativity instead of making that decision is going to hurt you. Knowing you need to make a pivot in your life, and holding back and not doing it and thinking about it and thinking about it and wishing about it and ignoring it is just going to create more potential harm to you and people that you may care about. You have to shorten the gap between knowing something needs to happen and making it happen, and I say that from somebody who's both made decisions quickly and made decisions very, very, very slowly. I've understood that it's not about the quick versus slow. It's about knowing what you really want, knowing what's really right, knowing what needs to happen and then not acting. And what happens in that scenario is that's can breed anxiety, breed Depression, breed the inability to show up at your best or show up as your true self, and you can end up out of alignment with yourself and not even notice that it's happening until it's too late.

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And my, my encouragement to you is not to take the risk to get to that place and so well, I know you know maybe this episode was a little bit all over the place for you, but it is where my heart was at today and something I've been thinking about For a couple of days now. It's been a my it's been in my mind a lot. I've seen a lot of negativity On the internet recent. I'm not even just talking about like somebody hating on me or whatever. I've seen like. I've seen negativity between Organizations. I've seen negativity in the development space. I've seen negativity on. I just have seen so much of it.

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What really dawned on me the other day was like this is how, this is how the enemy, this is how the world, this is how, this is how we get attacked. We are encouraged to be negative, we are encouraged to feel hurt, we are encouraged to be angry, we are encouraged to be scared, and so I'm counter encouraging that, excuse me, I'm counter encouraging that and I'm encouraging the opposite. I'm encouraging you to have courage. I'm encouraging you to be brave. I'm encouraging you to smile. I'm encouraging you to find joy.

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I'm encouraging you to write gratitude lists. I'm encouraging you to pray as the best spouse that you can. I'm encouraging you to show up as the best parent you can. I'm encouraging you to show up as the best athlete you can, the best business owner, the best employee, the, the best leader, the best team member, the best, whatever you are. I'm encouraging you to decide that you are going to show up as the best version of you today, no matter what, and do not let the negativity bring you down. Do not let the negativity affect you. Do not let the negativity make you less than you're capable of being, because ultimately, your Using don't get away, because I know that you are capable of being more than you are and providing that stability and that positivity to your world around you. I encourage you to do those things and I appreciate you for listening. I love you guys. I'll talk to you next time.