Hi, everybody. I’m Mike Staver. This is Mondays with Mike, a weekly video series where I answer questions from people just like you. Here’s this week’s question.
“What do you do to keep your focus positive?”
I don’t focus on the negative. Here’s what I do and this is probably not you kind of happy talk, people might not like what I’m about to say.
I don’t work on being positive. I work on being real. I work on being focused. I do try to be optimistic. I do try to see negative things as temporary. I try to see negative things as short-lived and as a sign of just a temporary setback. I do that, but I don’t stand in front of the mirror and say a lot of great things to myself. There are a lot of things that I do to just keep moving forward.
I tend not to get negative for long, and I tend to not be overly crazy positive. I tend to be right down the middle. I tend to be a purveyor of hope and a purveyor of a path forward. That’s what I do. I also do not put garbage in. I don’t read garbage. I don’t listen to garbage. I don’t entertain gossip. I don’t do any of that. That helps me stay what I call circumstantially neutral so that when something really ugly does happen, I can be present in the ugliness or the negativity.
When something great happens, I can be present, but I try to keep a nice negative hopeful focus so that I can keep my focus on the positive. I think it’s a bad idea to only focus on the positive. I think sometimes there’s some legitimate negativity that we need to address in our life and on our relationship. I know people who will not talk about something negative and they criticize people who do, but it’s basically their anxiety.
I’m not scared of negative. I just choose not to abide there. That’s all I do. Hope that’s helpful.
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