Transcription
Welcome to lesson number three. This lesson is, I think, very valuable for you because it's called the Positivity Algorithm. As you know, these first 10 days are really about installing the ways of being so you can become positive, and strong, and confident, and anti-fragile, and creative. So we get to the second piece of the 10-10-10 Heroism Transformation Accelerator, which is all about productivity and really lifting your game so you get amazing things done in this world. And then we get to the final days of the first month of our work together in this process, which is all about serving the world, which includes creating a lifestyle that you adore, making sure you're of use and helpful to your community, and having an impact on the world.
So today is the Positivity Algorithm, and I'm going to start off with one of my favorite books. It's called The Meditation, it's called Meditations, and it's written by Marcus Cirillius, Marcus Aurelius. As you probably know, was a Roman emperor who's known as the benevolent, uh, Roman emperor because he was a real leader. He really, in many ways, put his people above his own ego and his own pursuits and his own needs. And he wrote in a private journal over a multi-year campaign in the north of Europe, under very difficult conditions, his daily thoughts on leadership, on life, on mortality, on dealing with struggle. And years ago, I heard about Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and it sat on the night table of many of the world leaders. And I started to read it, and I couldn't understand it. It felt very dense, but I kept on coming back to it. And as I wrote about in The Everyday Hero Manifesto, every time I land in here in Rome, where I'm shooting this process for you, this program for you, but every time I land, I go to Fiumicino. I land in Fiumicino and I drop off my bags at the apartment, and I go over to the same bookstore, and I go over to the same section on Roman philosophy, and I pick up, it's usually this edition, and this, this version of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, and I read it every time I'm in Rome. And new things pop out and new things, um, show up in terms of how important they are. And it's not that I, the book changed. It's each time I arrive in Rome, I've changed because I've lived a little bit more, so I can grasp more insight and more of his wisdom.
I wanted to start off lesson number three with, uh, these words: "How small a fraction of all the measureless infinity of time is allotted to each of us? An instant, and it vanishes into eternity. How puny, too, is your portion of all the world's substance, sustenance, excuse me, substance? How insignificant your share of all the world's soul? On how my new to spec of the whole earth do you creep? As you ponder these things, make up your mind that nothing is of any import or importance, save to do what you do so that your own nature reflects it, or to bear what the world, the world's nature sends you." And to me, what that means is, you know, how short time is. So Emperor Aurelius's words offer us a great gateway into the Positivity Algorithm that I want to share with you in this lesson.
The Positivity Algorithm. And the first element, this is really a process that will help you become much more positive. I'm going to give you an insight to focus on, and then with each insight of the algorithm, I'm going to give you a specific tactic that you can start practicing today to give you rich and real value. So the first element is perspective. Perspective. And perspective is really what that passage I just read from Marcus Aurelius is all about. It reminds us of the shortness of life. It reminds us that no matter how important you are in the world, we all end up as dust. And even the longest life is a very, very short ride. And so to be more positive in a volatile world, to be more positive on a difficult day, to be more positive when you're having a challenge with an employee, or maybe it's a customer, or maybe it's a difficult product that you're working on, or maybe you're having a challenge at home with a, a teenager, or maybe it's your partner. I mean, the very nature of life is life sends us challenges so we can grow into our truest and highest selves, right? A bad day for the ego is an amazing day for the soul. So the ego judges adversity as bad. My, I'm here to suggest to you, and remind you with great love and respect, that adversity is the very terroir and soil that makes you into who you're meant to be. So those words on the shortness of life and to, to use your life well are very powerful. That's perspective. To be more positive, develop a richer and more and wider perspective. Remember that most things we worry about don't even happen. Have perspective on the fact that you might be struggling in traffic or with, with a difficult employee, but there are people in the world right now who are in a war zone, who don't have legs, who don't have a roof over their shoulder. And the more you practice perspective, the more you will hardwire in the neural circuitry through the power of neuroplasticity, which is the phenomenon of your brain to grow and to adapt. The brain is very plastic. You're built to change. You're built to install new habits. You're built to install new beliefs. So the more you start thinking a certain way, you will hardwire in the pathways of greater perspective.
A tactic for you to practice is just spend more time reading philosophy. Spend more time reading books like Meditations. Spend more time reading. Spend more time reading Shakespeare, who is a real master psychologist. But spend more time with philosophy, the books of wisdom, the deep books, the books of the great thinkers to get more perspective. Okay, so your tactic is: Tactic is read and study philosophy. Obviously, audiobooks are great too.
The second element of the Positivity Algorithm is gratefulness. Great fullness makes me think of the Persian proverb: "I cursed the fact I had no shoes until I saw the man who had no feet." Positive psychologists like Marty Seligman and Sonya Lyubomirsky talk about the concept of deliberate gratitude. Gratitude is not something only to be practiced on New Year's Day before a year ahead of you. Make it a deliberate ritual every single day so that you release the neurochemistry that gratitude offers to you. But so that in The Everyday Hero Manifesto, I talk about value chain gratitude. I talk about you go to the grocery store and you're standing at the checkout counter, say a silent prayer of gratitude to the cashier who's investing her labor or his labor to get you this food. And while you're waiting at the cash register, say a silent prayer for gratitude to the farmer, and then who tilled the soil so that you could have this food. And then say a silent prayer to the truck driver who brought it to the store. And just go on and on. And if you start to live like this, and you're on a bus, and you say a silent thanks to the bus driver who's spending their days driving so the bus, so you can get to the office. And then you go to the coffee shop and you say a silent prayer to the barista who is whistling while they work and making this beautiful coffee to you. And then you get home and you say a silent prayer to the builder who built your apartment or your house. Your life becomes one long exercise in gratitude, and you live life in the most beautiful and majestic of ways. So the second element of the Positivity Algorithm is really get good at gratefulness. Really get good at to great fullness.
Your tactic is a gratitude journal. A gratitude journal. Every day, write down five things you're grateful for. I write down often ten things I'm grateful for as part of my morning routine. And often they're the same things. They're, they're my partner and my children, and my love of my craft, and my garden in the backyard, and those kinds of things. But it's a really great way to start your day. It might even take 10 minutes. It works incredibly well. It's been backed up by lots of science. Gratefulness is the second part of the Positivity Algorithm.
Let's get to element number three. The, the three S's. What are the three S's? The three S's are really silence, solitude, and stillness. Great way to be positive is to be alone. We live in such a noisy world. There's a world of so much news, so much toxicity, so many people complaining. It's so busy. We miss, there's so much noise, we can't hear the signal anymore. And the signal really comes from the primal hero at your core that knows the wisdom, that knows how you should live, that knows what your destiny looks like, that knows even on a hard day, things will get better. You have such wisdom in you. You have such inspiration within you. You have such gold within you. You have such power, true power within you. You have such love within you. You have such decency within you. You have such caring within you. You have such mastery within you. This is why I'm here in Rome shooting this course for you, The Everyday Hero Manifesto Method. It's to introduce you, or reintroduce you, with that primal hero that lurks at your core before the world taught you to disbelieve and not trust and maybe not show up at your best in your work, and not save the fortune you're meant to have, and not lead the world-class life you're meant to lead. So you've got to be silent. You've got to be alone, solitude. You've got to be still on a daily basis.
What are the tactics? I'd say prayer. I pray for about half an hour to an hour every day. It works incredibly well. I meditate almost every day. Meditation. And I do a nature walk or a nature mountain bike ride almost every day. The Japanese have a concept, forest bathing. There's lots of amazing research on, on what it does when you go out into the woods. You reconnect to a higher source. You can think. You breathe the fresh air. The colors of the flowers and the leaves create a neurochemical reaction that makes you feel better. Inflammation comes down. You become more peaceful.
What is the fourth element of the Positivity Algorithm? Its morning routine. The Spartan warriors say, "Sweat more in training and you'll bleed less in war." Sweat more in training and you'll bleed less in war. The way you start your day dramatically influences the way the rest of your day unfolds. It is mission critical for you to be an ultra-performer, as well as a happy, soulful, grounded, loving human being, for you to start your day really well. You know, I've written a book called The 5 AM Club. It's a massive worldwide bestseller for a reason. It speaks to a formula called the 20-20-20 formula, which is from five o'clock to six o'clock, which is the hour I call the victory hour. And I believe getting up at five o'clock, it's the quietest time of the day. It allows you not only to exercise for those first 20 minutes, and then for the next 20 minutes of the 20-20-20 formula, reflect by writing in a journal or reading some philosophy, and then the final part of the 20-20-20 formula, from 5:40 to 6 o'clock, which, which is about growing, listening to a podcast, reviewing your study notes, list reading a book, doing something to grow. The 20-20-20 formula: first 20 minutes, sweat, move, get your metabolism going, get your BDNF running, and your dopamine, and your serotonin, and your norepinephrine, which is an amazing neurochemical which will help you focus in a world of, um, dramatically unfocused, uh, people. So start your day well. Your morning routine will really set you up to armor-plate you for whatever happens in the day. I get up early. I prepare myself. It's like, imagine an athlete who says, "I want to be world-class," but you don't get up early to do your morning practice. 5 to 6 AM, the 20-20-20 formula. A strong, iron-clad morning routine is will, will help you feel less stressful in the day. It'll help you be so much more focused, so much more creative, so much more grounded, and much more intentional. You won't be catching the day, running after it, feeling exhausted or reactive. You'll be very laser-focused, so your day is not only productive, but it's also wonderful and fun.
So your tactic is the 20-20-20 formula.
That brings me to the fifth element, element number five of the Positivity Algorithm, which is realism versus what I call dysfunctional optimism. If, if you read so many of the books in the personal growth field, it's like, if you're not happy every day, there's something wrong with you. And I really want to emphasize this point because I, I sure am not happy every day. I've had difficult weeks, I've had difficult months, I've had difficult years. I think that's just a human being trying to live a real life. And so I don't want you to think that I wake up every morning and there's butterflies fleeting, and there's rainbows in the background, and there's halos everywhere, and I'm dancing to, you know, soulful hip-hop music or whatever it is, you know, harps playing. I'm a human being just like you're a human being. And the very nature of life is, you, you're going to have seasons, and you're going to have tragic seasons, and that's, that's just the way it is. So element number five of the Positivity Algorithm is, please don't feel there's something wrong if you're not positive all the time. And I call the concept that's going around dysfunctional optimism. It's like, okay, you're going, you're, you're going through a divorce, or you're going through a bankruptcy, or you're going through an illness, or you experience a plague on the planet, or an economic collapse, you should be happy. Why would you be happy? Of course, you're going to be worried. It's a protection mechanism. The human brain has a negativity bias. It served us well hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years ago on the savannah. If we didn't have the negativity bias, so we searched our environment for threats, we'd be killed by saber-toothed tigers or warring tribes, or we'd starve. Now, we're in the modern age. We have the negativity bias. That's why a lot of us worry too much. We speak to do a presentation to 100 people, we worry about the one person who wasn't happy. But be realistic versus dysfunctional optimism.
And your tactic here's your tactic: It's to allow. So simple. If you're feeling sad, feel the sadness because feelings are like rainstorms. They have a beginning, a middle, and an end. If you don't feel it, you're going to repress it. It'll come back with dis-ease. You feel angry, you don't have to take it out on anyone. Pull out a journal, write about your anger. If you feel disappointed, start to notice the disappointment. I love Khalil Gibran's great book, The Prophet, and essentially he says, "If you don't feel your sorrow, you can't feel your joy." The same, he says, "The self-same cup that holds your sorrow," excuse me, "the self-same cup that holds your joy was burned in the potter's oven." Powerful idea. If you don't allow yourself to feel the full range of human emotions, if you don't allow yourself to feel sorrow and a hard time, sadness, disappointment, shame, guilt, you're not going to experience wonder. You're going to be very numb. You'll have a very, this is so profound, I think, you'll have a very narrow range of feelings. You won't feel very bad, you won't feel very good.
That brings me to the sixth element of the Positivity Algorithm, which is helpfulness. Lose yourself in service to others. You'll never really, really, really, really feel super bad when you give to other people and you spend your days in service. When you see your labor as an opportunity or platform to distribute value to people that enriches their lives, even on hard days when you don't feel so good, you rebound very, very quickly. So it's incredibly important to remember that to lead is to be of use. It's incredibly important that generosity is an amazing recipe for positivity. I'll repeat that again because it's worth writing down: Generosity is an amazing way to promote positivity. When I do something good for someone, when I give something to someone, when I give a gift to someone, whether it's a compliment or whatever it is, I feel better. It's such a paradox. Why would we not be generous?
Brings me to the final element, number seven, which is the shortness of life. The shortness of life. Just remember how short life is. Remember that a CEO gets buried next to the street sweeper, and no matter how long you live, we all end up as dust. And all these people we now revere, these titans of industry, and these major influencers, and these world leaders, in a few generations, they're mostly forgotten. So let's not take ourselves too seriously. Otherwise, no one will take us seriously. Remember the shortness of life. Great way to stay positive. And the shortness of life also reminds us of mortality. When we know, you know, I might have 20 Christmases left of my life. Sometimes with my partner, I say to her, I say, "You know, what are we going to do this? Are we not going to do this?" And then I go, "20 Christmases, 25 Christmases." And that just like zooms in on the fact that 20, 20 Christmases or 25 Christmases is not a long time. And so I take the risk, or I jump in and get and do the thing that I'm dreaming about doing.
So your tactic is a tombstone statement. A tombstone. I'll put TS. A tombstone statement. Write about how you want to have lived your life when you're on your last, on your deathbed. And, um, so you can live to the point. That's the Positivity Algorithm. Those are the seven elements. Hope I brought great value to you in this lesson. I'll see you in the next one.