TL;DR

In a world where data is abundant to support any narrative, why not choose the narrative where where you win?

Whom am I speaking to? Who is this going to help?

Mr. Pessimistic, who has no friends and is not liked by anyone.

My Practical Experience

I think I’ve unlocked another key to using my mind more effectively.

It’s all starting to come together now.

What I was doing before

In one of my previous posts, I discussed how humor is basically a life hack. In a following post, I then proceeded to talk about why unhappiness is irrational.

It’s no surprise that some of the greatest people I admire are also the best attitude, and we’ve already seen how attitude at the beginning of a test is for success.

So where does this lead me? What’s the next practical step I can take towards achieve my goals?

Journaling, but with the right narrative.

See, I used to journal all the time, but do you know what all my essays were about?

Everything that was going wrong in my life.

I literally has a section called “emotions” in my OneNote, and I could have subsections for “life”, “career”, “family”, etc. In each of these sections, I would list all the negative thoughts I had.

While this is a great first step in journaling, as it provided great therapeutic benefits for identifying things I did not like, it became the only type of jounraling I would engage in.

In other words, I was collecting evidence (CBT) for why my current situation was shit, which eventually spilled over to the rest of my life, and next thing you know, I was in a dark place.

What I’m doing now

I’ve only now made one simple change, that has drastically improved my relationship with people, made me more likable, and even funny:

start jounraling with a positive/humor narrative.

And that’s it!

Here are the benefits to this approach:

  1. With people, I start to pick up on who they are, and I think positively about them.
  2. For myself, I see people as they are, and therefore become more tolerant and likable person.
  3. I see the world as one giant comedy and pleasant surprise.
  4. My life starts generating luck by viewing the positive aspects of everything
  5. Humor relaxes me, which primes me to better solve the problems I face, and arrive at creative solutions

Now, I’m not saying to blindly ignore the negatives–if you don’t like something, you should certainly be aware about it and make plans to overcome it.

But the benefit of positive jounraling is that those things that bother you do not leak into negativity that you unload onto your work, other people, or the world around you.

Because let’s face it: no one likes being around negativity. Be the person who’s always in a good mood, and you will attract people who want to maintain that vibe.

Thanks for the advice, now how can I practically put this to use in a simple way for daily execution?

Instead of listing all the things you don’t like, develop the habit of view positivity and humor wherever you go. It exists, but you have to develop this muscle just like any other habit that you’ve developed.