The Mindset Hack For A Positive Mood (And Life)

A lot of the things that have happened this year affected many people emotionally. Especially with the COVID pandemic where businesses have suffered or forced to close, it's taken a toll on people’s mindset, mood, and overall behavior. On today’s podcast, Ryan Weeden opens up about the emotional struggles he’s had to deal with this year and shares a mindset hack he’s been using that made an impact on his overall mood and behavior and sparked more love between him and his wife. Tune in to discover this positivity hack that will help pick up your mood in no time.

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Listen to the podcast here:

The Mindset Hack For A Positive Mood (And Life)

I am excited to be here. I had a few minutes to try to crank out a brief episode where we're always, as content creators, trying to find more content and more time to create more content, even when we might not have the energy for it, or might not even know what we're going to talk about or even have a very rough idea of what we're talking about. That's what we have now. We've got a rough idea of what I'm going to be talking about. It's going to be short and sweet, but we're going to be talking about a mindset hack here. This is something to help you be in a positive mood more often.

I know this works because I've been using this mindset hack on myself and it has made such an impact on my overall mood and behavior. It helped to spark more love between my wife and I. That has been in full honesty, fleeting this in 2020. It's been a tough 2020. Not that we don't love each other, but it's been a stressful year. I know I'm not the only one that's felt that. With kids, with the COVID pandemic, with her business, having to close one business and another business is suffering, it's taken a toll. When you're not able to go out and find other outlets aside from those that you do with your immediate family and those people around you, it's been a struggle.

I've realized that a lot of it was because of the mood that I was carrying around with me and I do my best to stay positive. When I jump on lives, look to the world, and put my best self out there, I feel like sometimes I'm a phony because sometimes I'll turn the camera off, and then I'll start complaining again. This is so not me. It's not like this. I'm not usually this way, but I noticed that it took a toll after the second California shutdown in 2020. The first one, I was fine, motivated, working out, and doing great, but then the second time, we had to shut down in California, it affected me deeply and emotionally. That wasn't all of it. There were a lot of other things going on as well with the relationship with my parents. That it's been an estrangement.

It's been one of those years. I know I am not the only one. We are very blessed that we haven't gotten sick and our kids are healthy. We are able to put food on the table and enjoy our lives, given the circumstances of the world. We have had our challenges and one of those challenges has been arguments together. I've been doing a lot of searching in my own soul to find out if is it me or her? What is the problem? How are we not communicating accurately? As much as I would love to be able to blame somebody else, I had to blame myself.

Instead of saying something in a negative way, say it in a positive way.

One issue that I've always had in my life. It's a learned behavior. It’s a learned habit that I got from my father. My father is a great man. I got so much from him. He passed away when I was thirteen. He had an incredibly amazing side to him. He was hardworking, motivating, had a lot of courage, but one of his downsides was that he got very frustrated with himself. He would have a negative outlook when things weren't going his way or going the right way when what he thought was the right way. He would take it out on himself with self-abuse. He would also take it out on us. It wasn't a physical punishment when we did something wrong. Physical punishment back then was normal in the sense that you would get spanked. Spanking was where it stopped.

It wasn't with a belt or anything crazy. I don't have a traumatic childhood because of that. Spanking was one of those things that if we did something that we have done in public, then we would get our pants dropped and put over the knee and have our bare ass smacked in front of the world to see. That sucked, but he never did it again. That was an ‘80s zone. That was a lot more accepted back then like ‘90s and anything past then. You're going to get a call to child protective services or there's that chance. You don't want to be spanking your kids anymore. You've got to find other ways to let them know that what they did wasn't appropriate without the physicality of coming up with something that's going to scar them emotionally and embarrass them in ways that you would never want to be embarrassed yourself.

The trait that I got from my father was I get frustrated. If something is not going well, I see red, I get heated. I lose a sense of myself. I don't lash out physically to hurt anybody. I have done it to myself though. I have hurt myself before. After my father passed away in high school, it was a lonely time for me. I would wander the halls of my high school by myself, looking for somebody to stop me and say, “Ryan, are you okay?” I was lonely. I was depressed. I was full of feeling that I wanted to feel alive. I wanted to feel something besides this pain of loss.

Somehow some kids and like myself, I wanted to hurt myself. I feel like, “Do something to give me a sense of control.” I would go and find brick walls, and I would punch them until my hands bled. You could say that was a form of self-mutilation. I don't want to go that far because I don't feel like it was that big of a problem to where I needed to potentially go and see a therapist, although I should have, but it could have probably led to that if I didn't find my way out of that hole.

I would go, wander the halls, and constantly have bloody knuckles because I wanted people to see them and see the pain on the outside that I was feeling on the inside. That never happened. Nobody ever took notice of that, or if they did take notice to it, they didn't say anything to me. I never got that attention that I wanted. I didn't know that I wanted the attention. When you're that much younger, you don't know what you want. You're doing it because it feels like the right thing to do, even if it's completely the wrong thing to do. Looking back on that, I could feel the pain and I can start to make sense of it now as I'm older.

I have this side of me that gets down, depressed and angry. Unfortunately, that causes me to be very selfish and I only see myself, what's not right for me and why my life is not better. I was feeling a lot of that come up again in 2020 to the point where it was starting to affect my marriage and my relationship with my awesome, beautiful, talented wife, who is someone that puts herself last. I tended to this time to put myself first and I've got kids. They're first to me and my wife is first to me, but I lost sight of that. I know that this kind of thing can happen to the best of us, which is why it's important for us to check in on ourselves periodically.

It got to be such a problem that I decided to start seeing a therapist. I'm open about this because I am all about self-exploration. I am all about using a therapist as a tool to get to know myself better. I'm not looking at it like I failed. I'm not looking at it like I'm a bad person. I'm looking at this as almost like a coach, somebody that's going to help to unlock a new level of me that we were looking at it in a positive light. That way, I can see it as not like I’ve got to sit down and listen to a therapist, tell them my problems, and maybe they can fix them. It's not about fixing problems. It's about learning who you are and learning what to do differently so that you can show up as your best self. I've had a few sessions so far and it's been very eye-opening. I've learned a lot. That's the journey that I'm on now. We're getting started with that, but so far so good.

What I want to tell you about is something that has completely changed the game for me. This simple hack or internal dialogue switch has changed the way I see the world, has changed my mood overall. My relationship is immediately better with my entire family, especially my relationship with my wife and kids. My kids always steal my heart and my time. I love it. I can't wait to spend every second with them, maybe except when they're having a fit and crying, but otherwise as much time as I can, I love spending time with them.

Seeing a therapist is not about fixing problems. It's about learning who you are and learning what to do differently so that you can show up as your best self.  

This hack was something that I've heard about how you can say things to yourself in a certain way. Instead of saying something in a negative way, you say it in a positive way. That's what this is all about. My wife brought this up to me because she started getting back and working out again. After the doctor cleared her after having our second child, she started to find some inspiration to work out. We all need that extra kick in the butt sometimes. She saw this post that one of her friends had posted and she shared it with me, and it made sense to me.

The hack was something that I was listening to a podcast and it wasn't supposed to be a hack. It was something that I heard in Brendon Burchard's podcast, The Brendon Show, which is a great development personal growth podcast. I heard him talking with one of his guests and he said, “You'll rarely ever find me complaining. It's something I don't do. I don't complain. I'm usually always in a good mood.” I put two and two together. I'm thinking, “If you are complaining, your complaining is usually putting somebody in a bad mood. What if I stopped complaining? What if I never complained about anything?” I didn't complain about the dog pooping in the living room three times a day. That is a real problem and he's seven. It's not going to change it. Stop complaining about that.

Stop complaining about not getting enough sleep because my kids wake up in the middle of the night. Stop complaining about taking out the trash in the morning because I forgot to take them out the night before. Stop complaining or if I do complain, notice consciously that I am complaining and stop it there and say, “If that's a complaint, stop complaining. Take it. Catch that complaint and release it and turn it into something positive. Stop the cycle there because you complain once and then you complain a little bit more, then you get stuck in this cycle of complaints, in the cycle of negativity.”

I decided, “I'm going to stop complaining.” Three weeks later, I haven't complained more than maybe 1 or 2 times because I've been consciously not complaining. If I did notice myself complaining, I say to myself, “Wah, wah, wah.” Amanda, my assistant here, I even told her that if you ever catch me complaining at all, just say, “Wah, wah, wah.” How many times does she say that? She hasn't said it once because I have not complained at all because I'm conscious of it. I implore you guys. Stop complaining and stop explaining. No excuses for why things aren't going your way.

Make it a conscious effort now. Try it for one full day and see what that does to your mood. Don't complain about anything. Don't complain about the taste of your coffee if it's not the right kind of coffee. Don't complain about the traffic. Don't complain about a client showing up late. Own what is happening. Accept what is happening and move the F on to something positive. Think about what you do have that is working because there is so much in your life that is working.

There's so much in my life that is working and that is something to be grateful for. That's what I need to hold on to. Stop complaining. If you catch yourself complaining, say, “Wow, that's a complaint. I got that complaint. I caught that complaint.” Catch it with your hand. Grab it with a fist, throw it out into the world and say, “Goodbye, complaint. I'm not complaining about you anymore.” Try that. Let me know how it goes. You are amazing. I love you.