Mukund
Hello and welcome to pedal my way podcast where we talk about anything related to cycling and fitness. I’m your host, Mukund Murali. If you’re a fan of the show, Please remember to subscribe to this podcast and follow the website paddlemyway.com. Also follow @pedalmyway on Instagram to let me know of your cycling. And fitness goals.

Hi, Rob. Staying positive, I think staying positive leads to success. Do you agree with that?

Rob
100%.

Mukund
Have you had experience with this?

Rob
Yeah. So, I think there’s a great connection between positive action and reward in terms of day-to-day life, sporting success and fitness. And you know, that’s sort of the intersection that we’re sort of talking about here and on my. Way. So I thought, why don’t we talk about? What positive actions we can take on a day-to-day basis on an incremental basis that would have an impact over the long term and this this, this is something that I’ve been thinking about personally for a while and I’m sure there are certain steps that you take yourself to get to where you need to be and to stay positive. On a day-to-day basis. And so I thought it’d. Be a great point of conversation for us.

Mukund
I love it because I think staying positive ties to the overall theme of mental health. How to stay motivated to find happiness that we have talked about in the past few episodes, take me a step further. What is positive thinking according to you?

Rob
It’s a great question and for me, positive thinking is the idea of knowing what makes me happy and knowing what kind of beneficial influence I can have on both myself and the world around me. So what good things are happening and how can I make more good things happen? That’s a very simplistic way of. Saying it, but I think that’s what I think about when I think. Of positive thinking. It’s it’s turning a good thought. Ohh I wanna help this person. Ohh I want to plant a garden and then turning that in. The action.

Mukund
There and what steps do you take to have those thoughts? Is it something you practically think or only think about when you have like hard situations?

Rob
Yeah, it’s something that I try to do on a regular basis. I know a lot of people have, you know, people do meditation. People do positive reinforcement affirmations on a day-to-day basis. I know people have these sort of I don’t wanna say tricks but sorts of they have these devices that they use to sort of. Stay on an even keel and to stay happy and and and outwardly positive and inwardly positive too. It’s probably more important. Inwardly positive as well. What I try to do for myself is let’s start with the beginning of the day, when when I wake up, unless I’ve had my caffeine already, I’m not happy when I wake up, I’m usually immediately I’m like, OK, what do I have to do? I’m. I’m in, I’m in action mode when I wake up, what do I have to do today? What’s the next next step? I’m very sort of. Step oriented. Immediately when I open my eyes. What is the next thing I have to do? And so when I get into this mindset of two involved in the task, the work or whatever the the the next step is I try to remember. That it’s not just about myself and this task. It’s not whether I complete this task or not is not going to make or break the world around me. There are other things happening in the world around me that are outside of my circle of influence, and there are things that are far more important than whether I I don’t know whether I. Get back to my colleague on Slack about the meeting that we’re about to have, or whether I. Finish up this big project right on time, or whether it is finished the next day. You know these things are important on a on a business perspective on a day-to-day sort of personal, you know, committing to your deadlines and things like that is obviously very important. But I try to separate those things from my positivity. My actions that I stay try to stay positive are focused on myself and understanding that my ego and my productivity is not connected to my worth as a person. It’s sort of a big concept I guess, but it’s it’s one of those things.

I think sometimes you get involved in. Did I do a good job on this thing? And then if you didn’t do a good job or or or you know you get criticism from a colleague or a a client or whatever happens at work or you know, you have a a negative experience where you’re out shopping or something, you can take that as a slight on your ego and it can affect to your positive mindset. Right. It can affect you before these negative things happen. I try to go like is this the end of the world? If this thing happens or doesn’t happen? No, it isn’t. OK. That what thing can I do right now to remember that I am still on the right track? Well, what recent successes? Have I heard? For me, my work is is a big part of how I feel positive about myself and my abilities or my I don’t know what you would call that, but they my forward momentum in life. Is very much tied to my success at work, so I think of like, OK. Maybe something went wrong? At work today, but. Five other things went well last week. Five other ten other things went well the the previous month. What went well in those those times and what is not going well well now and what are, what are the differences there and what can you do to focus more on those positive things rather than the things that are going wrong now because the things. Going wrong now. It might just be that you’ve followed the same process, it’s just a different result, and that can happen in any business and in any industry. This is purely talking about work obviously, but is it? Now that I’ve I’ve talked for myself a little bit, is there anything you do in your day-to-day life that you can think of right now, McCann, that keeps you on a positive track every day?

Mukund
Of course, Rob, definitely going back a step, right? Like what is positive thinking my take on positive thinking is that in any situation you have an option to do it or not and everybody wants that action to succeed and for me to help myself to succeed in that. Action. Is. To visualize what success in that activity looks like, for example, you’re on a customer facing role at work. I’m at a customer facing role at work. My success is. Good feedback from the customer. Customer buys from me and overall increasing business for myself. But what will make it happen well. What will not make it happen is having a negative view of the. Customer. Always being pessimistic of what you do, not paying attention to the process, looking everything in in a negative way that is not going to help. Positivity is making sure that I see success. I visualize it what success means to me in that particular situation. And what would make that work? I know it’s much harder to describe it, but what I do is, you know when you ask for what steps I do is. When I’m trying to come up with a solution to a problem, I try to visualize what the end result is going to be. For the end result to be whatever it is, I need to break it down into individual parts and each of these individual parts has to have its own next step, right? So each of those steps includes critical thinking and positivity in terms of believing that that is going to succeed. There’s always an option of not working. Some things is not in your hands, but as long as you can control the outcome of that particular smaller task. I think the the bigger task succeeding is much better.

Rob
Yeah, 100 percent, 100%. You’re you’re absolutely right in terms of breaking out in terms of the, the, the micro tasks and then looking at it from a micro point of view and then building it out that that you’re absolutely right. In terms of the positivity is not. Something that. Comes out of that short term thinking you have to go. What is this next step? What was the last step I took and and why? Why now? Do I have a negative point of view? And often you if you if you look at it from a micro point of view like you’re talking about, you can sort of see that sort of connective tissue, right. You can sort of see that. Connective tissue between where was I when I was happy and and why am I not that same person? Now.

Mukund
Exactly what do you what do you bring about in terms of seeing past successes and what has what has made them success that helps a lot? Another example is if you’re going for an interview. You can go in hopeful that it’s going to work well. You can go in pessimistically like, hey, whatever I do, I don’t get the. Yup. Or you can go in with a positive feeling saying that you know, hey, I did this. I did the customer, I mean I, you know, I did more more research on the client. Being honest with the client in terms of capabilities, or rather the the interviewer you know, having the positive mindset as you know, it’s people at the other end of the table that you’re talking to. I know this might all sound cliche, but this has helped me. So what? It helps that situation according to you. What welcome you would want from the situation. It all depends on not having a negative mindset. I will not say not having a negative mindset as a positive mindset, but you at least take away the negative within both the energy out of the equation and going in with the what you can humanly possible. So you cannot kind of. Going with unrealistic expectations, but being positive in what you can at least give to the situation. Again, this is all kind of. My experience, and it might not be easily transferable, so that’s why I’m trying to be very cautious in the example cycle, because not everybody comes from the same state or same or the same situation. But any situation you have right, you can say ignoring the pessimistic aspect of it, the negative aspects of it, what is positive. That you think can come out of it, it can. It can apply anything can have positive and negative. So it all depends on focusing on the positive parts of things. Focusing on what you can control. Breaking it down into individual components just so that it’s more manageable.

Rob
Another another thing I thought about what I’ve done in terms of myself when I noticed there was a small time last year where I noticed that I was getting sort of more anxious outside of work when I noticed that I was getting emails and the small thing I did to sort of trick my brain is to change the sound of the notification on my phone when I got an e-mail. So that my brain was no longer associating that negative thing with that so. Sound and it might be, it might seem silly, but even small things like that like changing notification sounds on your phone if it. If you’re anxious about work or you have a negative. Experience at work. Or even just changing how you communicate with people at work. And that’s a bigger process, obviously, but small things like changing notification sounds. Thinking about how you. What? What triggers that negative reaction? What triggers a negative experience and and why? And it’s it’s really all about controlling the the original negative thought in your brain, because often I, at least for myself, is once I have that first negative thought. It’s very then becomes way more difficult. It becomes sort of waves, right? It becomes very much much more difficult to sort of control further negative thoughts after that. So yes, I was just thinking about a tangible step that most of us could do is is sort of think about what that trigger is for, for the negative thoughts and then? Sort of. Think about steps we can take to avoid that trigger or minimize the impact of that trigger.

Mukund
And even when you think about something that causes anxiety. Breaking down into individual parts, what part of it that is anxious? For example, in your situation, when you hear the sound of the phone ringing or notification. Is it the notification part of it? Maybe you have a subconscious association for the sound itself and nothing to do with the message that you’re getting. Or maybe it’s a message itself, you know, from somebody that you’re not looking forward to getting that message. If that’s the case, what is that that is bothering you? People tend to generalize. Problems. But once they break it down, it gets much easier to manage. So breaking it down has helped me personally in terms of reducing anxiety and have a positive mindset going into anything.

Rob
100% what we’re talking about is sort of understanding what’s what’s triggering that negativity to begin with.

What is the source of the anger or sadness or anxiety? Whatever that negative emotion is that is preventing you from being happy and positive on a day-to-day basis, what what is the trigger behind those negative feelings and exploring ways to sort of? Get ahead of those things. Obviously it depends on on the individual and the, the the challenge they’re. Thing alerts on your on my on my phone with one example where it’s sort of a a trick of the brain where we are being alerted to something that maybe should not be that priority level in our in our heads, you know like a text message sound on our phone or a phone call, a ringtone should not have the same. Alert level. The same sort of priority level as an emergency, but sometimes I think what happens is our brain starts associating those sounds with the highest alert level possible in our heads, right? So you get a message from a friend or something like that all of a sudden you’re all your senses are heightened and. And you know, you you respond in a way. That we would. Do if there was. If if we were sort of nature, if there was a threat. Right and that it’s sort of. I think. Partly for myself at least, any sort of negative thing is to do with. Avoiding. Not necessarily avoiding but changing the stimuli, changing the the things that are having that negative emotion to begin with and sort of understanding that not everything is going to go wrong if you get a message or whatever it is that is causing the negative reaction.

Mukund
That is a very good point. Yes, I agree with that as well. Having the association and what it is of that association that is giving you the anxiety, that’s a that’s a very valid point. Positivity has a lot of points in terms of expectations in terms of outlook, in terms of your overall experience with that particular situation. That that kind of gives you an intrinsic positive attitude to address. That situation, right? So what has been something that has not been positive from the get go and how have you kind of managed to?

Rob
In a previous job that I had, I had a quite a difficult client that I didn’t really enjoy working with the the problem that I had was I really wanted to originally what I thought I want wanted from the situation was to not have those clients anymore. I thought it would be way easier if I just didn’t work with them anymore. And that because that I felt like their expectations were far beyond not just what I what I was capable of, but also what anybody would be capable of given the resources available and the and the time constraints and all that kind of thing. And so I felt like this was becoming difficult and I didn’t know how quite how to address this with the with the client. And so it was starting to affect me. It was starting to affect my day-to-day life, even aside from working on that project. So what I did was I scheduled a meeting with someone that works at the company. Someone that wasn’t the client directly with someone that works for the client. And I said, what, what are the objectives? What are we trying to do here? You know, you set these these particular priorities for me right now that I.

Rob
I didn’t outwardly say I don’t think it’s possible, but I said let’s break it down into stages and look at what’s realistic given this time time frame and they say. That. You know this, this other person that works at the same company with the difficult client that I had was able to sort of break down the steps that we had to take to reach the goals that my client had. And So what we did is we broke down each step and looked at it from a month to month basis. And it wasn’t that, it was really a misunderstanding of what. What I thought my client wanted, they were quite difficult to speak to, to be honest. They were quite difficult in their communication style. They weren’t very open and and forthcoming with information. But what they actually wanted would have been realistic had they explain. And the the time frame to begin with. So I went sort of. With the the clients approval went to one of the people that worked for him and said, what is it that you’re trying to accomplish as a company? How do we do this? This is what the time is. These are my resources. How do we get this done? And then this other person was able to sort of break it down and we were able to accomplish the goal for the client, but we did it in a way where we did it step by step. Rather than trying to do. All the steps within a certain period of time, so we were able to accomplish the. Goal. Through communication, which really helped us sort of. Overcome, which I thought was a what I thought was a a roadblock in the communication style between myself and the client.

Mukund
You went back and you tried to get answers to questions that was bothering you and that removed the negative feeling you had about that.

Rob
Yeah, it’s sort of generally it’s most people’s major sources of negativity come from not being truthful with someone else or themselves about what they can accomplish could easily have been that I might have oversold my ability to to work on this project to the client themselves, but I felt like at the time. I was being overworked and becoming very difficult to work on this project and it. It started affecting a lot of different parts of my day-to-day life. You can resolve the conflict without always confronting and addressing the the major source of consternation or difficulty within that problem, especially when it’s a large company. You can go to a different person with a different personality and say, look, this is the thing, this is the problem. They will say this is the this is what we want. See and I sort of was able to breakdown the steps for them. One is the next step that you want to accomplish and then we moved to that step and we broke it down into I think it was in 15 stages or something like that in the project. In the end where before it was just one stage and it became. Overwhelming. So my solution to the problem. Was I went to the source of that unhappiness. The company themselves. I didn’t necessarily address it with the original client, but I addressed it with one of their employees and said what’s going on? What do we need to accomplish? And then it allowed me to sort of. Filter my negative emotions and sort of go. OK, I can do this now. I can do this next step. I can do this step after that, once we’ve done the first step, it’s really a step by step process that we can accomplish things and and. I was actually far more positive than I was with other projects after that because it just everything was moving towards the same goal. The client was happy, I was happy and you know they they saw the progress we were making and and they was able to sort of connect that progress from step to step. So it really it was really beneficial. With that relationship process.

Mukund
Very nice. I’m glad I booked our talk so. As a concluding or care, rather like a catch all what I gather from both our collective experience is that breaking it down into individual components. Because that gives you more transparency and more insights into the problem itself, #1. #2 is trying to investigate the individual steps itself to see if there are any roadblocks in those individual steps so that that can help to a better outcome for the bigger project or bigger you know what what you’re working. And #3 is going in with the negative pessimistic attitude does not help at all because that prevents you from investigating it further with the hopes of compelling it to satisfaction.

Rob
I think that’s that’s about right. It’s it’s the process and. Understanding yourself and understanding the problem or the keys to this, for me at least, the keys to this issue, this the keys to staying positive for me has always been one is instigating this feeling what is triggering this feeling. How do I address it and to whom do I address these feelings? And although it’s going to vary from individual, individual to individual, I do believe that there is always an original source of this negativity, and I do believe that there is a way to overcome or at least address these feelings to become a slightly more positive and slightly happier. On a day-to-day basis.

Mukund
Excellent. This has been a very interesting conversation, Rob. What I shared, I learned it myself. Anybody and everybody has faced a situation that seems unsurmountable. I knew that that is not how it’s supposed to work. There should be a solution to most of the problems that today I discovered this. We’re breaking down into into two components. And it looks like you also did that, and people are kind of gentle doing that. But for those really stuck in some situation. This has worked, so please give it a try. Anything else you’d like to. Add rob.

Rob
Just I’d like to really point out that it’s something we’ve mentioned on a few podcasts, but small things can make a huge difference on a day-to-day basis. As I was saying with my example, we’re just changing the ringtone on my phone. Try different things. Be open to trying different things. Be open to trying changing things. And and understanding that you have. Not only at a certain level of power, but a certain level of responsibility for how you feel and and you can address those feelings and working with your your social group. As we’ve talked before, IS is is a great way to. Do that as well. Excellent.

Mukund
Sounds good, rob. Once again, it’s been great talking to you on this crucial topic and till next time. You have a good one.

Rob
You too. Welcome. Great speaking with you, man.