Process Creates Positive Thinking

This is the Momentum Podcast.

There's no doubt that in times of high pressure and noise, especially situations like what the world is facing right now, it becomes really, really difficult for people to remain positive. In this episode of the Momentum Podcast, Alex is going to take you through a simple framework that we use that creates process in your life, in your business. And the reality is that process creates positive thinking. If you're able to implement these simple processes into your life and into your business, it will radically change the way that you're able to make it through this challenging time. I hope you enjoy.

Alex Charfen: I'm Alex Charfen and this is the momentum podcast made for empire builders, game changers, trailblazers, shot takers, record breakers, world makers and creators of all kinds. Those among us who can't turn it off and don't know why anyone would want to. We challenge complacency, destroy apathy, and we are obsessed with creating momentum so we can roll over bureaucracy and make our greatest contribution.

Sure we pay attention to their rules, but only so that we can bend them, break them, then rewrite them around our own will. We don't accept our destiny. We define it. We don't understand defeat because you only lose if you stop and we don't know how. While the rest of the world strives for average and clings desperately to the status quo, we are the minority, the few who are willing to hallucinate there could be a better future. And instead of just daydreaming of what could be, we endure the vulnerability and exposure it takes to make it real.

We are the evolutionary hunters. Clearly, the most important people in the world because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive human evolution and we always will be.

I've been through crisis before. I've actually experienced a lot of crisis in my life as far as when I became a consultant in a consulting industry, within a few years we were facing the .com crisis. When I was a kid, there was an oil crisis, the real estate crisis, Black Monday, there's been so many of them. And there is a way to conduct yourself in a crisis that will get you out ahead. And here's why this is so important. In a crisis, positive thinking is incredibly difficult.

And I just want us to get real about this. In a crisis, when somebody says, "Hey, all we need to do is just all think positive," I'm immediately irritated with that person because here's what it takes to think positive in the middle of chaos, in the middle of crisis is you need willpower. You literally have to consistently convince your brain to think positively throughout a crisis like this, and that is incredibly difficult.

In fact, here's what happens to most people, right, when we encounter crisis. Let's take a step back and what happens to most of us? When we encounter crisis, we immediately stop doing the things that are in our routine. We immediately stop following our processes, we immediately stop doing the things that actually make us feel good, that make us move forward and they give us momentum. And those things, the getting up and doing your morning routine and hydrating and eating well and spending time with people, even though we can't do it in person right now, we can still do it virtually. The things that create positive thinking often are thrown aside in a crisis because it's hard to maintain process.

So here's why I obsess over process. I actually made some notes here. So I remember when I was a kid, recognizing how important positive thinking was. And I remember this experiment when I was just a kid and you know when there was science fairs? I remember I did a science fair project on which detergent would clean best. It was totally non conclusive. But when I went to the science fair that day, there was this experiment that really had a profound effect on me.

One of the students had taken bean sprouts and was growing bean plants. And they had isolated one bean plant with a growth light and heavy metal, aggressive, angry music. They isolated another bean plant with nothing and they isolated another bean plant with uplifting classical music, really uplifting sonnets that were written about things that were happy and things that were celebratory, kind of the background music you see in a lot of cartoons. And it was amazing when I looked at those three plants because the first plant that got the heavy metal music actually kind of look wilted like it was having trouble growing, like it hadn't gotten enough nutrients. All three plants were treated the same. The middle plant that was the control kind of looked like a normal bean plan. And then the third plant that was listening to the uplifting classical music had grown to about double the size of the plant that was the control. So the difference between nothing and uplifting and positive was double the growth.

And I remember thinking, "Man, positive thinking's important. How do you do it?" I remember being a kid in school and being bullied and having a hard time and not knowing how to stay positive and being frustrated by it and trying to use willpower to create positive thinking. It's very difficult. Today, even as an adult, trying to use willpower for me to create positive thinking, it feels like I'm working every day just to stay in the zone. It feels like I'm working just to do the right things. I don't want to be that way as an adult.

See, here's what I want. I want to be able to show up in a way where I'm already positive, where I don't have to adjust my thinking, where I don't have to [inaudible 00:05:26] how it needs to be. And here's how I know that works for me and here's how I know it works for every entrepreneur. Process creates positive thinking. Whether it's something as simple as bulletproofing your day, crisis proofing your day with a morning routine that you check off every day. Whether it's something as simple as having a planning system where on a daily basis, you look at the things that are important. This is what's game changing about process creating positive thinking.

Let me show you. So first things first in my life, I get up and I do my morning routine every day. The first hour of my day is the best hour of my day. Then every day I get up and I go through my planning process with my momentum planner. I answer questions like, and you should do this, what is my intention for the day? Where was I uncomfortable yesterday? I have my top three items laid out. I know exactly what I'm going to do for the day, what my calendar is. This process grounds me. It helps me understand what I'm doing. It helps me understand how to move forward. In your business, the processes will help you move forward as well. If you're holding a daily huddle with your team where you share what happened the day before, even if it's virtual, this will pull you together, hold you closer as a team.

When you are planning a planning process, sitting down and planning, will ground you will hold you together. This one is so important, if you're using a process for alignment in the morning. Every morning, our family sits down, me, Katie, our two daughters, and we go through our momentum planner so that we are fully aligned for the day. We share with each other each of the things I was just talking about. What was I grateful for the day before? Where did I win the day before? What is my intention for the day? Where am I uncomfortable? What are the top three things I'm going to accomplish for the day? That process is grounding and it creates momentum.

So in this time of crisis, in this time of pressure and noise that is overwhelming, here's what will happen to a lot of us. By just knowing that it's there, we can think positively, we can do everything we want to do, everything we can to think better about this or to think in a different way, but if we create process where the first hour of our day is the best hour of our day. And then we get together with our team on a daily huddle, we connect, we see everybody and we feel the confidence of having our team. And then we are in a process, we are aligning and we know what the people around us are doing. Process will create the environment where you can actually have consistent, positive thinking.