Podcast Transcription: Let The Christmas Spirit Ring! How Holiday Gratitude Can Make Us Happier And Healthier  

Ted Ryce: Merry Christmas Eve, Happy Hanukkah, whatever you’re celebrating, Happy Holidays! Tomorrow is Christmas. Even though I’m not the most religious guy, I’ve always loved Christmas, Christmas Eve, Thanksgiving as well. And it’s a time of year where we get a chance to reflect and be grateful for what we have.

But here’s the thing: a lot of us, we have situations where we struggle to be grateful, either we have personal situations, maybe professionally, things are going well, and you got money on the in the bank, food on the table, but for whatever reason, you’re struggling to stay grateful, to stay positive.

Or maybe you’re in a really bad situation. Maybe it’s not just a personal thing, but maybe it’s professional, maybe it’s in your relationships. Maybe you’re freaked out about this crazy Coronavirus situation that we’re still dealing with a couple years later, and it can be tough. The bottom line is even under the best of times, it can be tough to be grateful, it can be tough to stay in that positive zone, in that positive emotional state.

So, what is up, my friends? Welcome back to the show. We’re going to do a Real Talk Friday episode here, like usual, but it’s going to be a bit different. I’m going to mix a bit of personal reflection, in addition to some of the science that I bring you every episode. I had a bit of a challenge with this episode. And I’m in a situation where this is the first Christmas where I’m really feeling the absence of family.

Now, if you don’t know my story, my biological mother died a long time ago when I was 14 years old. I’m 44 now, about to turn 45 in February. my brother was kidnapped and murdered when I was 19. My stepmother who raised me since I was six, died in 2009. And then my sister committed suicide in 2013/2012, right before the end of the year, after Christmas and before New Year’s, and then my dad died last year.

Heavy story, right? Kind of crazy. And I’m really feeling the absence of family this year. So, I just want to talk about that with you and how I’m handling it and what I’m doing, and how I’m not getting sucked into the negative spiral. That is probably most human beings’ natural tendency. But I also want to paint the picture here to let you know it’s not easy. It’s not easy at all.

I’ve cried a lot. And I don’t know what your situation is. Maybe you’ve been in a similar situation, similar circumstances. It’s funny, as I’ve shared my story, I don’t share my story for the attention. In fact, I’ve been on the national news when my brother was missing. My parents have met with two presidents to get laws changed. That was never the intention.

I share this because I want you to see yourself in my story. That is the purpose of stories. Even though you may not have the same circumstances. We may be different people, we may have different upbringings, but we’re still human beings, and that we share; we all share.

I’ve travelled... I lived in Southeast Asia for a little over two years. I’ve lived in South America in Brazil for eight months, in Mexico for six-ish months. In Colombia for about four or five months. I’ll tell you, people are very different. They look different. They sound different. They have different cultures, different traditions. But if we get down to it, we’re all human beings. We all share that. We all share more similarities. And so when I share my story, I want you to think not about me, and, “Oh, hey, really sorry to hear that, Ted.”

It’s funny sometimes when I share my story on social media, people are like, “Oh, so sorry, that happened to you,” or, “so sorry for your loss.” And I appreciate that. But I also wonder, are you not seeing your story reflected back to you or the things that you’re struggling with reflected back to you? Are you not seeing that?

Anyway, kind of digressing there. But the point is this, I want you to think about the story I’m going to share here and I want you to see yourself, I want you to pay attention to the parts that resonate with you. So here I am. I’m in Orlando, Florida, I’m with a girl I’ve been seeing and we’ve been here for a few weeks after I left Mexico. So, I’ve been here for about couple weeks now.

And this is the strangest Christmas that I’ve ever experienced. It’s really the first one without family. Even last year, when I was in Brazil, I was surrounded by family. I was with Gisele, who’s my ex-wife and current business partner—in case you didn’t know that story, and I was with her family. Giselle and I worked together for seven-ish years. And her family treats me like their family. And it was amazing to be there.

But here I am, for the first time alone in so many years, and I’m really feeling the absence of my family, not just my father. My father was like...I don’t know what the proper term is here, not the last straw, but after he was gone, I’ve been feeling the loss. I’ve been thinking about my brother, haven’t thought about my brother in a long time.

People always say, “Oh, if my brother were kidnapped and murdered at such a young age, I’d think about him every day.” Well, I don’t know, and most people don’t. It sounds like a terrible way to go through life, but all the people who I know, the ones who move forward, they don’t do that. You’ve got other things to attend to. But I’ve been thinking about him a lot.

I’ve been thinking about my sister. I haven’t thought about my sister this much in a long time. And even thinking about my mom, who I lost when I was 14. And so I think the takeaway point for you here is there are events in our lives that happen, and they trigger things in us. And for me, it was the loss of my dad, not just his death, but the coming to his rescue last year, and being there for him, but also how he was struggling.

I mean, we got into arguments, we were screaming at each other at one point, then he started to behave better, because he realized, “Fuck, I’m going to die. I should probably try to enjoy these last moments with my son,” because it was really fear that was driving his anger, fear and sadness. And it was just a tough thing to deal with. And it brought back a lot of the... I’ve stayed away from my family.

I love my dad dearly, my family, but they were people who were going down, they were sinking. And I had to really keep my distance from them to not go down with the ship. I had to create my own lifeboat, but I’m feeling the absence. And so I want to ask you, do you have something in your life that’s triggering some old wounds?

There’s a saying that I like a lot. It’s a bit cliche, but I think it’s true, and it’s: “What is hysterical is historical.” And what that means is when you get triggered by something, for example, the Coronavirus situation, and perhaps you’re afraid of getting sick or someone else close to you getting sick, perhaps you’re not worried about the health situation as much or your family maybe it’s more about the financial.

But whatever the focus is, you’ve got to ask yourself, well, where is this coming from? Where’s this coming from? And we all struggle with the same issues. It’s easier for our minds to drift to negativity, because we have this negativity bias in our brains. Even if you don’t have the crazy childhood, the dysfunctional family, even if you don’t look at it like that. we all have the same human wiring.

We all filter information through our brains threat-detection system called the amygdala. That’s the place where your negativity bias originates from. And our brains are wired to seek out the negative stuff and fixate on it. And as a result, bad emotions, bad memories, bad feedback, and bad impressions all have more of an impact. For example, what did you eat for dinner three weeks ago from today?

If you can remember, it was probably a special dinner of some sort. Maybe it was an anniversary, maybe it was one of your children’s birthdays, and you went out for dinner. But most likely, if it wasn’t one of those things, you don’t even remember it. But where were you on 9/11? Can you think back to that? I know I can, 2001, over 20 years ago.

So, bad emotions, bad memories, bad feedback, bad impressions, all have more impact, and our lives are filled with evidence of how easy it is to get stuck on these negative thoughts. I don’t know about you, but here’s an example out of my life. I’ve got 1,000 reviews on this podcast, 1,000, how amazing is that? And they’re mostly five stars. They’re mostly five stars.

But if I’m honest with you, there’s a couple of one star, three-star, two-star reviews. And man, I don’t remember them right now, but I remember reading them, and I got stuck on it a bit. One was talking about, like, how I was making voices, you know, sometimes I try a little acting, I change my voice, kind of like how I’m doing now. And they didn’t like it. They gave me a bad review. And I was stuck on it.

I had to actually think, “Should I change that about myself?” It’s like, it’s one review. Everyone else said it was okay. Nobody else said anything... Actually, nobody said that was the thing that made them come back to the show, but they said good things about the podcast. But it was that one negative review that got in my head for a while.

And you probably have had the same thing. Maybe a bunch of people give you compliments about what you’re wearing, or how good you look. But then someone says something a bit critical. Maybe it’s not even negative. It’s just on the line and you just can’t stop thinking about it. That’s our negativity bias.

And here’s the thing, another word for negativity bias and negative thoughts, negative feelings. It’s really simple. Chronic stress. Constant negativity is just chronic stress. Now, some negative emotions, I want to be clear here, it’s okay to feel bad sometimes, it’s normal.

So, when asked me the other day –someone asked me this on Instagram, how can we be positive during overwhelming moments of grief? And I answered this, and you may remember my real talk Friday answer. And it was, you’re not supposed to, you’re supposed to feel those things. When my dad died, I wasn’t like, “Yes, amazing. Amazing. He’s dead. Oh, this is great. It’s going to be a challenge for me to grow into a better person. Fantastic!”

I didn’t say that, I cried like a baby. I was super sad. You’re not supposed to be positive all the time. The issue is when those negative emotions or the crying becomes chronic. It becomes chronic when you’re easily triggerable.

Oh, gosh, just go on social media. There are people on social media, you’ll do a bunch of posts on social media, I mean, I do it for business, and I write a bunch of posts, and you’ll never hear from someone, but you’ll put up something, I’ll write something controversial and that’s the thing that they comment on, the one thing that they never...

And they don’t say... So, for example, I’ll put a lot of information, but then I’ll put up something controversial. And listen, I’m not trying to hurt people’s feelings or offend people. I’m getting better at communicating online, too, right? We’re all getting better. We’re all trying our best here. And certainly, I’m trying my best. I’m trying to find that line between saying something important, and also saying something that gets people’s attention. Because you can’t just say, “Hey, exercise, because it’s important.” People just scroll right past that. You’ve got to tell a story. You’ve got to make a point.

But anyway, then there’s these people you’ve never heard from them ever. They’ve never interacted with you. And perhaps they like most of what you put out, but then you’ll put something out that kind of triggers them and they’ll say something negative. That’s the negativity bias at work. Maybe you’re that person or you’ve been that person.

And again, back to the issue here: another word for or another term for constant negativity is chronic stress. And this is the key, folks, because people, the number one question I’ve gotten in my life, when people hear my story, they’re like, “How did you get over it, Ted? How do you get past all that tragedy? How do you get past that horrible story with your brother with the guy who murdered him and did all the horrible things? I mean, how do you get past that to a point where you’re in a good emotional state again?”

That’s the number one thing people ask me, and I’m with them. I think that’s the number one thing that I can help people with. I agree with that question. And it’s taken me a long time to figure out what have I been doing? What have I been doing? How did I end up this way? Is it just my personality?

And I can tell you it’s not. If you think that, you listen to me now, which is the tip of the iceberg. I’m 44 years old, about to be 45. Believe me, when I was 19, after my brother was murdered, and I was smoking marijuana every day, and then when I’d run out of marijuana because I was struggling financially, I was broke, or I couldn’t find it, I’d throw a fit. You didn’t see me smashing my furniture because I was so angry at life. You didn’t see me....

I’ve been at my worst. And I just didn’t like the results. I pulled through. Or you didn’t see me in my 20s, yeah, I was training a lot of celebrities and entrepreneurs and local restauranteurs and club owners and I was in shape, if you saw pictures of me, but I was out in the club doing drugs, drinking alcohol, which is drug, by the way. In case you didn’t know that yet. 2021, folks, alcohol is a drug, so is caffeine.

But anyway, but I was drinking, I was taking ecstasy, sometimes I would smoke marijuana as much as I could. It was my favorite one, not because of any other reason other than it made my brain chemistry—it made me okay with things. I would feel bad and I would get stoned on some weed and I would feel okay with things. It was a way to cope with the negative emotions.

So, I’ve tried a lot of terrible ways to deal with negative emotions. And this is the big thing that I’ve learned. The traumatic events in our life are just a form of chronic stress, or just a form of stress. And when it becomes chronic, then that’s when chronic stress shortens your life expectancy by a couple years, increases your risk for developing diseases, like heart disease, leads to stress eating, addiction, alcohol consumption and other drugs, scrolling endlessly online, gambling, and also crushes your quality of life.

Guess what? Why do you think they...I just watched the movie the other day… Oh, gosh, I don’t even remember…How the Grinch Saved Christmas? I don’t even remember the name of you know, the famous 1966 Grinch movie. For some reason, I can’t recall the name of it. I just think about it. I was in Universal Studios the other day, the Grinch is everywhere there.

I’ve heard this...I could probably sing the song. Well, maybe not the whole song because it’s so weird, right? Dr. Seuss and the rhymes he makes up. But don’t be the Grinch. Nobody wants to be around that person. It’s kind of funny, if you remember the movie, it’s like, maybe his shoes were too tight, or there was something else, some other reason. But then they said what they thought was it was because his heart was two sizes too small, right?

And that’s what stress kind of does to you when it turns chronic, irritability, sleep disruption, which in turn, causes more irritability, and you can’t concentrate. And even worse, the way you feel starts to affect your behavior. In fact, what a lot of psychologists believe is that when stress becomes too high, too chronic, that’s when depression starts to take hold, especially when it leads to overworking or not doing enough or over sleeping or under sleeping and you start skipping the gym or yoga class, or you stop reading before bed and you don’t reach out to people.

So that’s the negative side. And just in case you’re wondering, positive emotions do amazing things for you. People are more creative when they’re experiencing positive emotions. They’re more able to creatively solve a problem, positive emotions, you’re more likely to be resilient. There’s a whole line of research showing that people are able to bounce back more quickly from adversity, when they’re experiencing more positive emotions.

We know that kids, when they’re feeling good, they perform better on math tests. Positive emotions make us more socially connected to others, even across groups. Why do you think everyone seems to just hate each other right now? They’re already feeling negative.

There’s no empathy for people who think differently. A lot of people, and of course, just the ones who are popularized in social media, the loudest ones, again another example of our negativity bias, we’re not able to get past cultural or racial or language differences and see the unique individual behind those traits, and also, how we’re so similar, the universal qualities that we all share.

So, folks, if you think it’s the Coronavirus that’s making everything so negative, what I’m sharing with you here is, there’s always struggles that are external and outside of ourselves. But the biggest thing, especially in America, is that we’re a nation of unhappy people –or not all of us, but there are so many unhappy people that is dragging everybody else down.

But if we’re all prone to negativity anyway. And even if you’re a positive person, you probably noticed, if you hang around negative people enough, you’re like, “Oh, my gosh, I feel so drained.” Or, “Oh, my gosh, they drag you down, you don’t drag them up.” It’s the negativity bias again, at work, folks.

So, if we’re all prone to negativity, how is it that some people can see the bright side more easily? What are they doing differently? How can we learn to think this way? Or if you’ve heard my story, you want to know, “Well, how the hell did you do that, Ted? How are you able to do that?”

And I’ll tell you, I’ll break it down like this: Awareness is number one. This is the key. That’s why I talk about this so much, an understanding our human predilection for negativity is part of the solution. Because what we tell ourselves is that, “Oh, I’m so negative, because look at the state of the world.” Have you ever heard someone say that? “Oh, what a world we live in.”

Really? Try going back 100 years ago, or even worse, 500 years ago, where people were decapitated for criticizing the king. And in some countries, you can still be in prison for 10 years by criticizing the king. Anyway, I digress. The problem is when we start believing those thoughts are true like, we’re super logical. We’re not.

And also recognizing how your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are interconnected and interrelated. This is one of the things, it’s like, oh, when I’m feeling this way, it gets triggered, and I start thinking these thoughts, and I start doing these behaviours? You’ve got to look—what are the triggers here?

And for me, I’ll tell you, some of the triggers have been...I can’t even put my finger on it. Why have I been thinking so much about my brother and my sister? I’ll tell you some triggers. Actually, one of the triggers is being back in Orlando. Some of the best experiences I had in my childhood were, you know, I always say my parents were terrible, right? And terrible parents.

And when I say that, by the way, I mean, I can’t say that’s not being judgmental, but I’m being kind of objective about it. What I’m saying is they... once you pass, like, you can say people really try and I do believe that my parents did, but there’s got a, you know, even if a kid gets up to bat and strikes out every time and when he throws the ball...

Like for example, when I played soccer, I scored on my own team during a game, I was terrible at it. I tried my hardest, but I was just terrible. Lack of coaching was the reason, by the way, because I ended up being a great athlete when I got into martial arts, because I paid for one-on-one lessons and so on and so on.

But anyway, the point I say that... the reason why I bring that up is because my parents, one of the good things that they did, in spite of the alcoholism, the emotional abuse, the improper boundaries, and other things, they really worked hard on Christmas, they really worked. And they took us to Orlando, they created so many positive experiences here.

So, when I get here, and I see some of the things like, for example, in 2011, I was here with my dad. The last time I was here, we rode The Mummy a couple times, which is a roller coaster in Universal Studios. Now Islands of Adventure, but Universal Studios, it’s a great roller coaster. It’s in the dark, and we had so much fun doing it. And we took...you know those ridiculous photos they take of you and then they’re like 25 bucks or 30 bucks or whatever, we ended up buying them and I’m so glad we did that.

And I rode The Mummy again recently and it just made me tear up, you know, it makes me kind of tear up thinking about it. So those are some of the triggers that have been coming up for me now. And it brings up these feelings of, “Oh man, you know, my dad’s not here. I miss him. I’m sad that he’s not here, even though he was a bit crusty to deal with, a bit grinchy in his last days” and his last month, I should say. In his last days, it was a very different experience.

He was a bit grinchy in the last months, but I miss him. And it can start leading into this negative spiral, the thoughts, “Oh, my dad’s not here. Oh, my family’s all gone. Oh, that makes me sad,” right? And then the thoughts, the feelings, behaviors, they all just feed into each other, just creating more negativity and more negativity, more negativity.

So, the first part was awareness, being aware of all these things. And then the second thing is to take actions. The second thing is to take action. And what are we talking about here? Well, I mentioned in the last Real Talk Friday, the positivity ratio, or one of my recent Real Talk Fridays, the positivity ratio: three positive experiences are needed to counteract one negative.

And I want to tell you, I think I’ve shared this previously, but not only have I been struggling a bit here in Orlando, with emotions, but I was struggling a few months ago, I’ve been struggling on and off. This whole year has been a struggle of emotions. Now I feel like I’m almost through this process of grieving and making sense and really getting back into life.

And I took time off of work last year. I had clients, but the ones that signed up with me actually reached out to me. We shut down our group coaching, which we’ve opened back up again. I shut a lot of things down, just gave myself the space to feel whatever I was feeling. And man, it was a lot. And when it became like moments of overwhelming negativity, I would let myself feel them.

Again, you’re not supposed to be positive in those overwhelming moments of sadness, you’re not supposed to, you’re supposed to cry, you’re supposed to feel sad. That’s okay. In fact, it’s good because if you don’t get those emotions out, they get stuck in you. Not the most sciency explanation, but I do believe the science will eventually show it—how when we go through events, the activation of our sympathetic nervous system, our stress response gets a bit more triggerable.

And then when we go through experiences that help us process those negative events. In other words, crying and letting ourselves cry, remember the past, feel the feelings, let them go through us, we feel better afterward. But again, if it starts to turn chronic, if it starts to turn into too many negative experiences, if the negative experiences start to overcome that positivity ratio of three to one, that’s the problem, it becomes imbalanced.

And that’s what I’ve learned, personally. And here are a couple things I want to say to you that I’ve learned over the years, you’re always one workout away from a better mood. This is true for me, it’s true for everyone who I’ve ever worked with as a personal trainer, they would come in. My number one goal wasn’t to give someone a good workout, per se, it was for them to leave in a better mood than they came. And guess what, that was my strategy as a personal trainer.

People’s bodies, sometimes they change, sometimes they didn’t. But the one thing that always happen, or at least almost always happened, is they left that workout feeling in a better mood. That was my goal. That was my goal and it worked, and I learned it. I did that myself. Today... This morning, in fact, I wasn’t feeling the best sometimes just happens.

So, I went for a walk outside, 47-minute walk outside. Guess what, by the end of my walk, being outside, it’s not super sunny, in fact, it’s quite overcast here in Orlando today, when I got back, I felt better. Another thing is that you’re always one good night’s sleep away from a better mood. You’re always one good night’s sleep away from a better mood.

Now this can be a bit more challenging if you’re struggling to sleep if you already have insomnia. And by the way, if you let that get away from you, that’s one of the problems. We’ve go back to that awareness. Sleep issues are something you want to get handled. So if you’re not able to get that good night’s sleep, go back to the awareness, really get your sleep handle, but you’re always one good night’s sleep away from a better mood.

You’re always one exciting experience away from a better mood as well. You can get on a roller coaster. You can be depressed before you get on, but if you can just get yourself to that roller coaster, you can’t be sad on the roller coaster. You can’t be depressed on the roller coaster because you’re afraid for your life, if it’s a good enough roller coaster.

And let me tell you, last year after my dad died, as I’ve said, I went right to Universal Studios. And Gisele, my ex-wife and current business partner, she was with me. She helped me with my dad, and we she was going to come help him, and then go back to Brazil, but he ended up dying, it’s terrible. So, she kind of hung out with me. And we went through this process of handling my dad’s affairs together, and afterward, I was like, ‘We need to get out of here.” It was so stressful. It was so terrible, so stressful.

And people are just coming after his money, coming after him. Topic for another time is how we treat elderly people in this country, or at least in Florida. They come after you. It’s like, "Oh, this this fucker’s going to die, let’s milk them for every cent he’s got, let’s get everything we can out of his estate.” It was just terrible to see it.

So, after all that, I had to go to Universal. And here I am a year later, hopping on roller coasters again, and let me tell you that velocity roller coaster, Velocity Coaster, in Islands of Adventure. It’s the best roller coaster I’ve ever been on. Oh my gosh, I rode it five times, five times! It’s just incredible.

I think I’m going to go back to Universal one more time just to…It’s just so incredible. And I sat on the front four out of the five times, it was incredible. You’ve got to try it, if you’re into rollercoasters, you’ve got to keep your arms up the entire time you feel like you’re going to fly out. It’s just amazing, incredible.

So anyway, I did that, I was kind of feeling bad when I first got to Orlando recently. But Pri, the girl who I’m seeing who came to visit me here, and I was kind of in a bad mood, and I said, “Listen, we need to get to the parks, I promise I’m just one day away from feeling a lot better and being better company.” And that’s what happened. I spent the day at the parks, I was walking around outside being around other people.

And it’s good energy in the park; most people are happy to be there. And they’re riding roller coasters and the same thing’s happening to them. The exciting experiences, make all the other experiences melt away. And of course, it’s expensive to be there. So, kind of self-selecting for people who either have the money to be there, they’re doing well enough financially, or who have the hustle mentality to figure out how to get the money to be there, which is where I was most of my life.

Another thing I learned is you’re always one relaxing experience away from a better mood. And I don’t mean watching Netflix and having a beer or glass of wine, alcohol, so many people with the alcohol thing. Look, I’m okay with alcohol, but it disrupts your sleep, even if you have just a little bit, so it’s adding more stress. You’re not relaxing with alcohol, you’re making the situation worse, you have to de-stress just so you can drink alcohol, not the other way around. Get that one straight.

Some of the smart people do the silliest things. You don’t relax with a glass of wine, okay? It’s taking away from you. So, you have to do other things to give yourself enough reserves so that you can drink alcohol and deal with the lack of sleep, or the lack of quality sleep. When we’re talking about relaxing experiences, we’re talking about getting a massage, doing a floatation tank, doing meditation, getting acupuncture, something more proactive, time in nature.

Those are the things we’re talking about: active recovery, active destressing, not passive. The passive, it just doesn’t work. I mean, passive relaxation is called sleep. But laying around it—and maybe if you’re laying in a dark room away from stimulation, that’s one thing, that can help, because you can’t take a nap. But that’s what we’re talking about.

But we’re not talking about watching Netflix. TV stimulates your brain. Look, I love series, and I watch Netflix or some type of streaming every single day, almost every single day. But I don’t do it to relax. I do it to get excited in a different way. I mean, it helps you wind down a little bit but it still, for me, I can’t watch a Netflix series and then fall right asleep. It stimulates your brain.

And if you are falling asleep, that’s because you’re sleep deprived. It’s not because it’s relaxing, okay? You’ve got to learn these things, folks. You’ve got to be able to discern the nuances here the devil is in the details.

And you’re always one conversation away from a better mood. That’s why I hope you come back and listen to this show.

The number one thing that I can do for you is to help you feel better, help you feel more gratitude, help you feel like you can make the changes you want to in your life. And that’s really what I’m about. I love my coaching. I love the fat loss, the body transformation coaching.

Health is a huge part of what I do. It’s the foundation of feeling better. It’s the foundation of high performance. It’s the foundation for healing. It’s the foundation for everything good, having good health. Don’t believe me? Wait until you’re sick. And then let’s have a conversation. Because a healthy man has 1,000 wishes, but a sick man or woman, whatever, only has one, I just want to get better. I just want to feel better. I just want my health back. I just want to feel normal again.

It’s the foundation, folks. So, listen, as we go through this journey together, I hope you enjoyed today. I hope you took some lessons away from it. And I’ve got to tell you, I’m in spite of everything right now. I mean, I’m not going to see any of my family for Christmas, or New Year’s, I’m going to be here with Priscilla. And we’re spending Christmas together, we’re looking for things to do and we’re figuring it out together. Not going to tell you her story, but she’s going to be away from her family, obviously.

And I’m just honored to have you here. I’m grateful for you. I’m grateful for being alive. I’m grateful for being here right now in Orlando and experiencing these things. I’m grateful that I’m able to share this story, my story in a way that I hope helps you, right? I’m grateful to be here on this podcast with you. I’m grateful that people keep coming back to listen; they must be getting something from it because the numbers are growing. So I’m glad you’re getting something from it.

And again, when you find yourself sinking into those negative thoughts, those negative feelings and behaviors just understand, that’s natural for human beings. It’s our negativity bias at work. It isn’t a rational cost-benefit analysis of what’s going on in the world. It’s certainly not even close to that. It’s really just the animal part of ourselves, taking over from the more human part of ourselves.

The more human part of ourselves is what we need more, need more in our life to make our life better so that we feel better. It’s what our families need more. It’s the part of us… the human part of us is what’s going to solve a lot of these problems. The human part of us is what created all the miracles that we have. The human part of us is only accessed when we take action and fight against our predilection for negativity. So ask yourself, what can you do? And then go do it, folks.

Love you lots. Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays, and I’ll speak to you on Monday.