Dan Martell - How to Stop Negative Thoughts Fast

00:00:00.000 Hey there, Dan Martell here, serial entrepreneur,

00:00:01.760 investor, and creator of SAS Academy.

00:00:03.600 In this episode, I want to share with you

00:00:05.560 how to get through the struggle of the challenges

00:00:08.520 you're dealing with in your business

00:00:09.720 without losing what you've built.

00:00:11.520 And be sure to stay at the end.

00:00:12.600 We're going to share with you how to get access

00:00:14.320 to my Dream 100 training.

00:00:16.960 It's the most powerful way I know

00:00:18.840 of designing the perfect network and relationships

00:00:22.920 that you're going to need to take your business

00:00:24.480 to the next level.

00:00:25.360 But let's get into it.

00:00:30.000 So the other day, I got a call from one of my coaching

00:00:41.820 clients, Carl, and he was about 70K in MRR.

00:00:46.520 And for the last few months, he was killing it.

00:00:48.600 Things were going good.

00:00:49.600 He's really pumped about his business.

00:00:51.240 He was hiring team members.

00:00:52.980 And all of a sudden, his lead salesperson quit on him.

00:00:56.980 And it got him into this funk, this funk of now

00:01:00.700 I got to get back into sales.

00:01:02.320 And I really hate doing that.

00:01:05.120 I thought I was making forward progress.

00:01:07.080 And why am I doing this business?

00:01:08.740 Why is it so hard?

00:01:10.380 And we talked about it for a little bit.

00:01:11.960 And all I did was share a few perspectives with him,

00:01:15.580 perspective around how he was showing up in his business,

00:01:18.640 asking him questions like, if the business was successful,

00:01:22.120 would you still be excited about it?

00:01:23.520 The answer was yes.

00:01:24.700 There's a bunch of different things

00:01:25.840 that I think when you're dealing with struggles

00:01:28.300 in your business, that a different perspective

00:01:31.420 will allow you to get an understanding that will make

00:01:35.760 it easier to move forward.

00:01:36.820 And that's what I do with Carl.

00:01:38.800 And within weeks, he changed.

00:01:41.060 He shifted his mindset, got back on to the business

00:01:44.600 he was building before he got kicked in the stomach,

00:01:47.200 and has now almost doubled his MRR only three months later

00:01:50.800 from where he was at.

00:01:52.160 And the reason why, and he shared this feedback with me,

00:01:54.760 That's why I wanted to do this.

00:01:56.160 This episode is a few key things that really connected

00:02:00.000 for him that allowed him to reframe the struggles

00:02:03.000 he was going through without throwing everything

00:02:05.140 he built out the window and go and doing something else.

00:02:07.620 So this is what I wanna share with you.

00:02:08.680 These three mindset shifts perspective

00:02:11.260 to help you get through your struggle.

00:02:13.540 Number one, battles versus wars.

00:02:16.440 So often when we're in the thick of things,

00:02:19.180 we don't realize that this is not the war that we're losing.

00:02:23.080 It's just a battle.

00:02:24.220 What I mean by this is that you might have somebody quit on you

00:02:27.460 and you might think like, man, this is a lot harder

00:02:29.660 than it has to be.

00:02:30.480 And you're ready to throw out the whole business

00:02:32.860 because of one incident.

00:02:34.420 And I think if we zoom up a level and get perspective

00:02:37.600 and realize that, hey, I'm winning at the war.

00:02:41.140 We're actually making some head grounds.

00:02:42.700 This is a great business.

00:02:43.780 Our customers are loving us.

00:02:45.160 And I just happened to lose a small battle.

00:02:48.140 Then all of a sudden, it doesn't make it so big.

00:02:50.560 We need to put things in context for actually how bad they are.

00:02:54.200 I mean, I think about the example of having a kid.

00:02:58.940 I don't know if you've ever had a baby,

00:03:00.260 but when you might love your child, you create a human.

00:03:05.760 It is pretty awesome.

00:03:07.380 But in the beginning, there are so many battles,

00:03:11.180 I mean, moments where they throw up all over themselves

00:03:14.180 if you're on a plane, or they have an incident in school,

00:03:18.300 or whatever it is.

00:03:19.160 But those are just little battles

00:03:21.920 throughout the journey that's going

00:03:23.840 to play a bigger part in the outcome

00:03:27.920 that you're trying to achieve, which

00:03:29.080 is take everything that you've learned,

00:03:31.700 every bad thing, every good thing, and kind of reframe it

00:03:34.340 and hopefully bring this person, your child,

00:03:38.520 into the world in a more prepared and more amazing way.

00:03:42.660 And that, to me, is the bigger picture.

00:03:45.140 And we would never stop being a parent because a thing happened

00:03:48.560 where we just felt frustrated in the moment.

00:03:50.680 We pick that up and work through it and kind of move forward.

00:03:53.780 And I think too often in our business,

00:03:55.840 because it's just not, we forget that perspective.

00:03:58.600 We're too quick to run away.

00:04:00.100 So think about that.

00:04:01.400 Are you truly losing the war or did you just lose a battle

00:04:05.140 and you have to get back in the game and keep moving forward?

00:04:07.660 And to me, I think of my kids.

00:04:09.240 It's like, of course, yes, there's a moment.

00:04:11.220 There's an issue.

00:04:12.100 I'm not giving up on them.

00:04:13.340 I'm showing up.

00:04:14.100 I'm going to be the best dad I possibly can.

00:04:16.440 And this is just a moment in the grand scheme of things

00:04:18.700 that we'll probably forget about.

00:04:19.900 Maybe, maybe he'll bring it up in therapy.

00:04:21.860 Who knows?

00:04:22.600 But at the end of the day, that's just

00:04:24.900 a little blip on the grand scheme of what we're after.

00:04:28.200 Embrace the struggle.

00:04:30.060 So one of the mindset shifts that I did for Carl

00:04:33.200 was sharing with him that I believe that the problems

00:04:39.700 don't get smaller, we just get better.

00:04:42.100 So this whole thing of becoming the person who can deal,

00:04:45.340 becoming the person who can deal with million dollar

00:04:47.880 problems.

00:04:48.880 Some of you guys are stuck at $10 problems.

00:04:50.540 $10 problem happens in your business,

00:04:51.680 you freak out and you go crazy, OK?

00:04:53.420 Some of you guys, it's 100, some of you, it's 1,000,

00:04:55.120 some of you, it's 10,000, 100,000, a million, 10 million,

00:04:57.760 100 million.

00:04:58.700 I don't know where you're at, but at the end of the day,

00:05:00.920 the more you grow businesses, you know, Richard Branson,

00:05:03.620 Elon Musk, et cetera, they're not getting easier to build.

00:05:08.000 They just become better.

00:05:09.820 One of my favorite kind of quotes

00:05:13.000 that my friend Jason Gaynor shared with me

00:05:14.640 is, no pressure, no diamonds, right?

00:05:17.320 No challenges, no great outcomes.

00:05:20.680 No frustrating moments, no opportunity to learn.

00:05:24.880 No pressure, no diamonds.

00:05:25.940 There's always a quick reset for me

00:05:27.580 that I shared with Carl that really helped him reset

00:05:29.420 his mindset.

00:05:30.580 And probably the most incredible example of this recently

00:05:34.000 is from a guy named Shawn Stevenson.

00:05:35.800 If you don't know who Shawn was, he recently passed away.

00:05:40.560 And it was a crazy event that essentially woke up

00:05:46.380 That morning, everything was great.

00:05:47.580 Fell off of his cherries.

00:05:49.320 Sean had a disease that caused him to not really grow.

00:05:52.620 He's about 3 foot 2 inches tall.

00:05:54.460 They called him the little giant.

00:05:56.100 And his mission in the world was to rid

00:05:58.260 the world of insecurities.

00:05:59.900 And I had the privilege of meeting him several times

00:06:03.480 as I was speaking at events.

00:06:05.100 He was there to connect and chat.

00:06:07.060 And he was, he had such, he shined his light so bright

00:06:11.160 that anybody that interacted with him

00:06:13.620 just felt this sense of belief that he had in you

00:06:17.520 and the way he showed up in his world

00:06:19.360 and the stories he shared.

00:06:21.600 And even when he fell off his chair and hit his head

00:06:26.160 and then had an injury and went to the hospital

00:06:28.640 and over an eight-hour period or whatever it was,

00:06:31.860 coming in and out of consciousness,

00:06:33.460 in one of those moments, he looked up to his wife

00:06:36.540 and to his best friend and said, this happened for me.

00:06:43.620 I can't even imagine how the belief systems that he has,

00:06:50.880 that even in that moment on your deathbed,

00:06:53.380 when you've done everything right

00:06:55.360 and an accident causes that kind of outcome,

00:06:59.320 and you can still have that perspective

00:07:01.600 that this happened for me, not to me.

00:07:04.520 That was his perspective.

00:07:05.560 And this is something he shared on stage

00:07:06.940 with his key messages.

00:07:08.640 That, and I saw the outpour of people

00:07:11.820 telling their version their story of how he had that impact on them and shifted that mindset

00:07:17.100 to me that is the most incredible example of embracing the struggle of shifting and saying hey

00:07:23.420 this thing that just didn't have this happened to me didn't happen against me this happened for me

00:07:29.100 this is an opportunity for me and i'm going to use this in my life he never once complained about

00:07:35.500 being in a chair or taking you know a lot of time to get dressed in the morning having a caretaker

00:07:40.860 you know support him as he traveled the world sean did more in his whole life than most people

00:07:45.420 will ever hope to accomplish and this is a guy that that struggled with the physical disability

00:07:51.580 that couldn't easily navigate our world and he showed up and he shined his light and his

00:07:56.140 perspective on life was just so beautiful that it's really hard for me to to coach sometimes

00:08:02.700 founders that are they're having too big of a pity party because in the grand scheme of thing it's

00:08:06.540 nothing.

00:08:07.500 And if we can reframe that and just say, hey,

00:08:09.860 this thing happened for me, not to me,

00:08:13.200 I think you're going to have such a different outlook

00:08:15.860 and a different approach to your day

00:08:17.240 that's going to make some of these battles

00:08:19.860 seem inconsequential and allow you

00:08:22.460 to get a higher perspective of why

00:08:24.100 we do this in the first place.

00:08:25.940 Number three, ask for help.

00:08:28.180 One of the most powerful things that you

00:08:30.440 can do when you're struggling, when

00:08:31.880 you're going through a tough time is just like my client Carl

00:08:34.780 it is reach out and ask for help.

00:08:37.160 Too often, I coach really high-performing founders.

00:08:40.120 And people are always posting in the Facebook group

00:08:42.500 questions around their marketing strategies

00:08:43.960 and their Facebook strategies and their product strategies

00:08:45.700 and their retention strategies and their leadership

00:08:47.700 and all that stuff.

00:08:48.360 And that's all great.

00:08:51.280 Because I have the most powerful playbooks and frameworks

00:08:53.680 to help them grow their software businesses.

00:08:55.940 But what's most important for me,

00:08:58.400 and I have to remind my clients this all the time,

00:09:00.720 is I need you to reach out to me when things are bad,

00:09:04.240 When your lead investor pulls out at the last minute.

00:09:06.460 When your co-founder CTO quits on you.

00:09:08.980 When your product, there's a bug in your product

00:09:11.620 that causes 30% of your clients to cancel on you.

00:09:15.820 Those are the moments that you want

00:09:18.880 somebody in your corner to be able to listen

00:09:22.480 around what's going on, get perspective of what

00:09:26.240 this really means in the grand scheme of things,

00:09:27.880 and help you go through the list of options

00:09:30.440 to execute and implement a strategy

00:09:32.980 to get you out of that hole.

00:09:34.660 And for me, I've felt always it's a privilege

00:09:38.260 when folks like Carl or my other clients reach out to me

00:09:40.780 to give them that perspective.

00:09:41.980 But even for myself, I have people in my life

00:09:45.280 that when I'm struggling, there's no question anymore.

00:09:49.520 When I'm up against something tough,

00:09:52.060 when something hits me in the side that I didn't expect,

00:09:54.820 I'm reaching out and saying, hey, here's what just happened.

00:09:57.460 You give them the data.

00:09:58.960 Here's what I think my options are, this, this, and this.

00:10:02.620 And here's the one that I think I'm going to lead with.

00:10:04.720 What do you think?

00:10:06.100 And I think that's the right way to approach it.

00:10:08.160 Too often, when people ask for help, they don't give.

00:10:10.580 They're like, man, I'm really bummed out.

00:10:11.880 What should I do?

00:10:13.300 That doesn't give anything.

00:10:15.580 Literally what I just said, this is what happened to me.

00:10:18.400 Here's how I'm feeling.

00:10:19.520 Here's what I think I can do.

00:10:20.860 Here's the thing that I'm going to lead with.

00:10:22.900 What do you think?

00:10:23.720 That's the proper way to ask for help

00:10:26.300 so that they have context.

00:10:27.720 If they need to double click and go deeper on a specific area,

00:10:30.520 they'll ask those questions.

00:10:31.740 But too often, people just suffer in silence.

00:10:35.920 And they suffer alone.

00:10:37.440 And they don't have the opportunity

00:10:40.620 to get perspective from somebody else.

00:10:42.840 Or worse, they feel like, I need to solve this first

00:10:45.180 before I kind of go out and reach out.

00:10:46.920 And that's a weird one.

00:10:47.640 It's like, I wanted to solve this.

00:10:48.840 I didn't want to bug you.

00:10:49.740 That's what I get from my coaching clients.

00:10:51.240 It's just like, why?

00:10:53.220 I'm here to help you when things are tough.

00:10:55.860 That's why I'm here.

00:10:57.720 I feel like I've gone through all of this.

00:11:00.300 I've grown my mindset, my beliefs.

00:11:02.880 I've had the success and the struggles

00:11:04.620 that I've had in my life so that I could show up

00:11:06.720 for you in those moments.

00:11:07.680 And people don't even ask for help.

00:11:09.480 So just make sure that you have the 2 AM friend,

00:11:14.260 as my friend Shaw calls it.

00:11:15.780 A 2 AM friend is somebody at 2 AM in the morning

00:11:17.920 when you can't sleep, when you're struggling,

00:11:19.800 you can pick up the phone and you know they'll answer.

00:11:22.180 That is a beautiful thing.

00:11:23.940 So quick recap, how to get through any struggle

00:11:26.420 without losing everything you built.

00:11:27.460 Three perspectives.

00:11:28.320 Number one, battles versus wars.

00:11:31.140 Number two, embracing the struggle.

00:11:33.940 And number three, ask for help.

00:11:36.660 As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode,

00:11:38.280 I want to share with you an exclusive resource

00:11:40.200 called my Dream 100.

00:11:41.860 This is something that I've used every business I've ever

00:11:44.500 started.

00:11:45.300 I sit down and I make the list of the 100 people

00:11:48.720 that I need to connect with over the next two to three years

00:11:51.660 to increase the probability of success in my business

00:11:54.760 and increase the growth ramp.

00:11:56.160 And there's three specific categories or types of people

00:11:59.920 that I go and do research around to add to the Dream 100

00:12:03.600 to make sure that I have the advisory team and the peer

00:12:08.100 networks and the mentors around me

00:12:09.700 to support me in achieving my dream.

00:12:11.900 So you can click the link below to download

00:12:13.500 that training for yourself.

00:12:15.720 But if you want to know how do you

00:12:17.460 build that group of people that you can turn to and ask

00:12:19.800 for help when things are tough, this is how you do it.

00:12:22.400 So Dream 100, click the link below and download that.

00:12:24.880 If you found this video helpful, please

00:12:27.100 lightly click the Subscribe button, like this video.

00:12:30.940 And if there's anybody you care about that you

00:12:32.440 feel this video could serve, feel free to share it

00:12:34.380 with them directly.

00:12:35.680 As per usual, I want to challenge you

00:12:37.360 to live a bigger life and a bigger business.

00:12:39.120 And I'll see you next Monday.

Dan Martell - December 09, 2019

How to Stop Negative Thoughts Fast

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