Ep. 34 – Positivity + Thankfulness
5 Minute Rants by THE a.m.
A podcast predicated on the journey of business and life.
Ep. 34 – Positivity + Thankfulness
It actually takes work to think positively and be positive.
It takes a little bit of work to see things positively, to say that compliment, to be happy.
It takes work to look at what you have and move forward.
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It actually takes work to think positively and be positive. It takes a little bit of work to […]
July 17, 2023
Episode Transcript
Michael Abernathy 0:00
Hey what’s up everybody? Welcome back to THE a.m. Welcome back to 5 Minute Rants. I’m your host, Michael Abernathy. Welcome to the show where we talk about anything and everything predicated on the journey of life, and business guys. Well, I hope you all have had a great week and a great day so far, and let’s just kind of jump right into this.
So last episode, I talked about failure, okay? I talked about how we want to avoid failure. We don’t like failure as people. We don’t like being wrong. For some reason, an irrational reason we just do not like being wrong. Well, I actually want to talk about how to look at failure, and how to see failure, and the word I guess, that I want to focus on is really positivity okay? So there’s a saying, you can see the glass half empty, or you can see the glass half full. Another saying that you could follow this with is every cloud has a silver lining. And what that means is, the world is going to be however you tend to look at it.
So there’s statistical studies that people who live in countries with less materialism and less wealth, tend to be more happy, and they tend to be more positive. Why? Because they’re not looking at what they don’t have because there’s a universal gap and a universal whole of, everybody doesn’t have. Instead, they’re thankful and grateful for what they do have. It’s the same thing with failure. It’s the same thing in life today. Without that gratefulness and without that thankfulness, there’s no way you’re going to be positive.
See, we live, and if you live in America and your listening to this, I do, we live in a very materialistically wealthy nation. And as a result, because wealth is so abundant, it’s the normal thing to see. And as a result of that, we tend to see what we don’t have. and thus, oh failure, oh this, and oh that! Social media has exasperated this in a large way. Social media has really exasperated keeping up with the Joneses. Now I’m not saying all social media is bad or anything like that. But the outlook you have while on social media can be very toxic, okay?
And so I’m saying this, very importantly, because as you move through life, you’re going to experience failure. As you move through life, you’re going to experience what you don’t have, but really stopping to look and really stopping to see, oh, my gosh, what do I have? I am really blessed. If you’re in America, even if you’re in the poverty line in America, you’re in the top 1% of all the world, somewhere around there, one to 2%, we can fact check me and double check me but at least I know that we are way up there, okay? and so looking at that, it’s really that mindset of being like, it could be worse, but what do I have? You know what, I’ve got a roof, I’ve got running water, I got food and being fed, okay. And is it what I want it to be? No, but that’s Okay.
The same thing with failure? Did my decisions turn out the way I wanted them to be? No, Okay, well, that’s great, that’s fine, you can change it now. You can learn you can grow, there’s going to be no growth without failure. By the way, there’s going to be no growth and no learning without the acknowledgement of failure and in order to handle failure correctly, I think you really have to be thankful and really positive in where you’re at.
So like, I’ve got a Harvard degree in stupidity, guys and that has really come from a crap ton of failure. I know a ton of stuff not to do, and still learning a ton of stuff not to do. But instead of letting that just destroy me, destroy my partnership, destroy my marriage, and all these things and letting that become toxic. It’s really like, wow, I’m so thankful that this has happened. None of this stuff has cost me in my life. None of This stuff is costing my limbs. None of this stuff has like ever put me on the street to where I’m not living without food, and, and to really think about that. So as you move forward, like without having that positive mindset, without being thankful, man, life is going to be really miserable.
Now, here’s the key about positivity, it actually takes work, to think positively it actually takes work to be thankful. One of the best things I’ve ever done in my life started saying out loud, thank you, rght? And so it takes work to compliment people it takes work to actually choose to be thankful. And so that’s one of the reasons why it seems to be so hard to be positive at times because it’s real work in a lot of ways. and it’s real work to actually get the point to where that is your normal go to versus negative.
I’ve worked a lot in marketing. One of our companies does a lot of marketing and one things we’ve always found is that it’s much easier for people to be negative. Why because that’s the way they’ve trained themselves is to be negative and that’s their first go to versus okay, yeah, the food was more salty than I wanted it but I’m not gonna leave a one star review for that, why? You know what, the waiter was great. They took care of me. They at least didn’t spit in my dish. Anyways, that being said, guys, really think about positivity and thankfulness and I will catch you guys on the flipside.
Oh and I’m thankful for y’all. Peace!