Today’s Guest
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I’m back again, with another solo episode! Today, I’m talking about pessimism. This episode is inspired by a question from my Patreon community:
Can I ask you a bit more about Heart-centered Energy Work® and PSYCH-K®/mindset work and the importance of using these sort of techniques to let go of pessimism, or prevent pessimism building up? There is a lot of it about these days! I have noticed that I am feeling a lot less of this sort of thing since I trained in PSYCH-K®.
This is a fantastic question, because it helped me to realize that I, too, have experienced a massive shift from pessimism to optimism, hopelessness to hopefulness, as a result of the mindset and energy work that I’ve been doing for the past five-plus years. In this episode, I explain the very simple reason why I think this kind of mindset work is such a powerful catalyst in making such big shifts to a more optimistic way of thinking. I also share specific questions for you to ask yourself, journal prompts to explore, and practical actions you can take to transform your life into one of joy and optimism.
Listen To This Episode
What You’ll Learn
- What is pessimism and how to let go of it for good
- How to use mindset and energy healing techniques to shift to an optimistic perspective in life
- How to radically transform your life by letting go of pessimism
Things I Discussed
Connect With Holly
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Transcript
The transcript for this episode can also be downloaded here (no opt-in required).
Holly: Hello and welcome to the Into the Woods podcast, episode 280. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another solo episode. Today, I am going to talk about pessimism. This episode is inspired by a question from my Patreon community, which is as follows:
“Can I ask you a bit more about HEW® work and PSYCH-K® mindset work and the importance of using these sorts of techniques to let go of pessimism, or prevent pessimism from building up, there is a lot of it about these days. I have noticed that I am feeling a lot less of this sort of thing since I trained in PSYCH-K®.”
Now, this is an excellent question and it is something that I really had to think about, because, I realised, I do worry about certain things, but I am not at all a pessimistic person, and don’t focus on the negative; and I honestly feel that is an absolute direct result of having trained in PSYCH-K®, working on this stuff, with myself, with other people, using HEW®, because the basis of mindset work like this, and techniques like this is, specifically. moving away from what you don’t want and focussing on what you do want. And I think that, to me, is the foundation of shifting you mind from a pessimistic outlook to an optimistic outlook.
So, let’s talk about pessimism, we are going to talk about: what it is, how to let go of it for good, specific ways that you can release pessimistic attitudes and completely change our outlook in life in terms of whether you see the glass half-full or half-empty. So, let’s get started.
Pessimism, what is it?
I did a little search online and pessimism is generally considered to be a tendency to see the worst aspect of things, or to believe that the worst will happen, in our lives, in the world in general – it is the exact opposite of optimism. The tendency to see the glass as half-empty, rather than half-full, and generally focussing on the negative things in life rather than the positive: the difficulties, the challenges, the blocks, the fears, the crap that can fill up and clutter our minds.
So, how can you get rid of pessimism for good?
How do you let go of it for good? How do you get rid of it? Now, whether or not you consider yourself to be a pessimistic person, I think it can be useful to listen to this episode so if you think: oh no, I don’t have any problems with this… I think there is always room for improvement, because, honestly, I feel like I have mostly been an optimistic person in life, however, there have been times in my life, particularly the period of time when I was running my first business, where things were really difficult, I was making bad decisions in life, I was involved with a business partner that had wildly different values to mine and my life just felt really dark and difficult and impossible to change. So, I think there was an element of pessimism in there, because I don’t think I believed that I could ever get myself out of that situation and obviously I did. So let’s talk about how to identify the causes of pessimism because I think that is the first step.
So, if you are feeling pessimistic, if you are feeling down about your life, if you are feeling hopeless, we can give this a bunch of different words because “hopeless” is a word that I really resonate with. There have been some things in my life, and even up until really recently, even this year, where I felt hopeless about certain situations, particularly my weight. So I have talked about this in previous podcasts, but if you haven’t listened to them you might know, or you might know, that I have had a thyroid problem for a number of years, gained a bunch of weight, felt terrible, just really low-energy, and was just generally pissed off and unhappy with my body, but even more so hopeless about the possibility of changing. I did so much mindset work over the last five years, with myself, with other people, tried all kinds of different I don’t want to say diets, but ways of eating, and nothing worked, nothing worked, and I felt hopeless. So, I am aware that I don’t necessarily consider myself to be pessimistic, but I think hopelessness is the same kind of thing, and it wasn’t until I found the thing that worked for me, which was a combination of Keto and intermittent fasting, that I started not only losing weight but just experiencing a massive increase in my energy levels and sleeping better and all kinds of other things. So, that, to me, is a very recent example of something that I felt hopeless or pessimistic about, that I was able to completely change around. So if you don’t resonate with the word “pessimistic”, there may be things in your life that you feel negative about, that you feel down about, that you have dark thoughts about, that you feel hopeless about, that you feel powerless to change, whether it is in your online life, in the real world.
What things am I pessimistic about?
So maybe sit down with your journal and ask yourself the question: what things am I pessimistic about? This could be people, places, situations. What am I hopeless about? What am I feeling down about? Identify the cause of these pessimistic, or hopeless feelings, this is super, super, important. And, it is the basis of all the mindset work that I have been doing for the last few years, it is the first step: identify what you are currently experiencing and in this specific case identify what you are currently experiencing in terms of pessimism, in terms of hopelessness, in terms of feeling down and dark about life. Pay attention to how this shows up in your life, how pessimism shows up in your life, how hopelessness shows up in your life. Pay attention to your thoughts and write this stuff down. Pay attention to the language that you use when you are speaking, to yourself in your mind, or when you are speaking to other people. Pay attention to the words that you use, especially the negative language that you use, because that is something that you an very easily turnaround using mindset work or by consciously changing the language that you use but start by drawing all this stuff to your attention. And, I always recommend that you write it down, so have a page, or several pages in your journal, where you write all this stuff down, because only by bringing this stuff to your awareness and you change it around.
What are you afraid of?
So, also look at your fears: what are you afraid of? This pessimistic fear that you have, or this hopelessness, what are you afraid of? For me, with the weight, I was afraid that I was never going to lose the weight, I was afraid I was never going to return to my previous levels of energy. I was afraid that I would never be able to do all the things that I wanted to do, because I didn’t have the energy to do them. I was afraid of the limitations that I felt that my body was placing on my life. So, look at your fears. In the situation of my first business, I was afraid that I would never be able to leave that situation, and that was one of the hardest things I ever did, and it was also one of the best decisions that I ever made in my life and that was very complex, but that was one of my things, I was afraid that I would never be able to get out of that situation.
So, once you have kind of dug up all the “mind crap”, all the stuff that you are afraid of, all your fears, your blocks, and look at your beliefs as well, look at what are your beliefs around your ability to change your situation or situations or change the world or change your world. Once you have dug up all that crap and you have written it down, so you can see it, you need to turn that on its head and focus on what do you want instead? So, instead of pessimism, optimism; instead of hopelessness, hopefulness. Instead of negative crap, positive stuff. But be specific obviously {laughing} it is not as much as saying: I want to be optimistic! Really take all that crap that you dug up in the previous questions that I asked, and turn those on your head by saying: what do you want instead? So, instead of being unhappy with my business, I want to be happy with my business. Instead of feeling hopeless about my life, I want to feel hopeful about my life. But really get into the specifics: what would make you feel hopeful about your life? What would make you feel happy with your business? Happy with your career? Happy with your relationships? And really turn the focus away from you don’t want and focus on what you do want. And this is the other foundation of the mindset work that I do and that I have been talking about on this podcast for years, it is: what do you want instead? Focus on what you do want, rather than what you don’t want. That is a massive, massive, mindset shift in itself and that alone will start to change your life and that is the basis of law of attraction, The Secret. And I see so many people complaining about that book online, or badmouthing it, because they say: you can’t just focus on what you want, and it will magically happen, but I think the importance of that book, and that film, is that it got people, some people, focussing on what they do want, rather than what they don’t want and to me that is a massive, massive, shift that cannot be undervalued. It is so important on what you do want, so start focussing on what you do want. And, as you do so, do the mindset work, do it with yourself, train in a technique you can use with yourself, or work with someone else to change your beliefs to change your perspective, to help you to focus and take action on the things that you do want.
The specifics
So, that’s the foundation lets, get a little bit more into some specifics. So, another things that you can do to reduce pessimism, is to stop comparing yourself to other people. Now, I know this is easier said than done and I did a podcast episode about not that long back, it was episode 239, and I will link to that in the show notes: how to quit the comparison game for good. So, if that is something that you really struggle with, listen to that episode and do some work on that, because comparing yourself to other people, you can’t win with that, that is always a losing game. So think about who are the people you compare yourself to? I know I have in the past compared myself to other people in my life and it has made me feel terrible, and I have had to take certain actions over the years to help myself to stop comparing myself to them. That has been a big thing for me and I know that’s a big thing for other people. So, stop comparing yourself to others and again you have got that podcast episode 239, if you want to delve deeper into that.
Reduce negativity
Reduce activity in your life, negative people, get rid of negative people in your life, stop following them on social media and you don’t have to unfriend them on Facebook, you can just unfollow them. Stop seeing them in your life, stop talking to them on the phone, just start avoiding the negative people in your life or reducing the time that you spend with them or the contact that you have with them, if you cannot get them out of your life for good. That is a massive, massive, shift that you can do. You have got to believe that it is okay to do that, I think a lot of people have issues about removing people from their lives, but you are not obligated to have everyone in your life, or certain people in your life. If someone is not contributing to your positive outlook in life, if they are actively dragging you down by their own pessimism, do give yourself permission to let go of those people in whatever way is most appropriate for you but I think that is another massive thing that you can do to change your own outlook in life, is removing negative people from your life.
Also, media, so pay attention to what things you have been watching, whether it is films, whether it is television, whether it is music, pay attention to what you feed your brain. Don’t watch sad stuff if it is going to bring you down, don’t watch stressful dramas if they make you feel tense and stressed out when you watch them. Focus on comedies, watch stuff that makes you happy, watch stuff that makes you laugh. Stop watching the news, I quite watching the news, or listening to the news, years and years ago and it massively changed my life. If there is something important going on in the world people will be talking about it on social media and you will hear about it, so there is no need to fill your brain with that kind of negative crap.
If you have certain friends who are really politically active, complaining about political stuff all the time, unfollow them on social media. Pay attention to the stuff that you don’t like seeing that doesn’t feed your brain in a positive way and just stop it, unfollow those people, unfollow them on Twitter, unfollow them on Facebook, get that stuff out of your visual field. A lot of people complain about how Facebook is a toxic place, it is not, it is not good, it is not bad, it is neutral. Your experience on Facebook and other social networks is based on the people that you are following, the stuff that you read, the stuff that you choose to connect with. So if you are currently choosing to connect yourself to negative stuff that leads to your pessimism make a different decision, unfollow all the stuff that doesn’t make you happy, unfollow all the stuff that doesn’t not fit the goals, the images, the visions that you want to be focussing on. You get to choose what kind of experience you want to have. You get to choose what kind of media that you want to consume. You get to choose how you want to feed your brain, do you want to feed it with crap? Do you want to feed it with good stuff that lifts you up and helps you focus on the stuff that you want to achieve in life?
Gratitude
Another thing that I find really, really, useful and I don’t do this on a regular basis, I have tried to make part of my daily routine, but it just doesn’t happen, so it is something that I do on and off as needed, and this is something that I have recommended to so many people in sessions over the years, and so often I hear: oh, but I hate doing that! So, if you hate it don’t do it, or find a different way to do it; but, gratitude work, I find to be super-useful in turning my mindset around from pessimistic, negative, hopeless mindset to an optimistic, hopeful, positive, life-enhancing mindset? Do it however you want, make a list of ten things that you are grateful for, make a list of three things, make a list of one thing, I don’t know if that’s actually a list if it is one thing, whatever, pick one thing that you are grateful for. And, go with the basics, I remember when I was doing gratitude work every day, for several weeks, and I really struggled with stuff and I really had to go back to basics: I have a house to live in, I have a roof over my head, I have a flushing toilet — some people don’t have that in the world — I have modern plumbing in my life, stuff that we take for granted that stuff can be really useful because there are people in the world that don’t have this stuff and it makes your life super-easy. So, gratitude work, I don’t know why some people don’t like it, I don’t know what it is that it triggers in people, if you know please write in and let me know why you don’t like gratitude work. I have heard from so many people that they don’t like it, so I don’t know, try a different way of doing it, find a way of making it work for you, do it on an as-needed basis like I do, you don’t have to do it every day, but it such a powerful way of completing shifting your mindset to the good stuff, I highly recommend gratitude work.
Problem Solving
Next, if you are feeling pessimistic because you are focussing on your problems, all the problems you have in life, make a list of those problems, get your journal out and make a list of all your problems, leave some lines in-between them, maybe number then in order of priority, from the most important to resolved, or which ones are causing you the biggest stressed or which ones are making you feel most pessimistic, order them in some way and then focus on solutions: what could you do? And just let yourself brainstorm and just write down whatever comes to mind, focus on how you can solve these problems and also focus on for each of those problems, or challenges, how can you get help? Who could help you with this? And getting help is not always something that I am good at, at all, I know other people aren’t good at it as well. Think about who you could ask for help.
So, I have been having this issue with, again my first business partner, trying to cash out of that business, it has been going on for ten years, I am owed a lot of money. It has been an annoying thing that has been going on in the back of my mind for the last ten years, it makes me feel powerless, and angry and just argh, but things have started moving forward in that aspect in part because I got help. I hired a lawyer, someone who is experienced in mediation, someone who is experienced in legal world, someone who thinks like a lawyer thinks because she is a lawyer. And, that’s really, really helping me to move forward with that situation. So, think about how you can get help, help from friends, help from family, help from professionals, even if you think you can’t afford those professionals, write it down because that is a possible solution.
So write down all the possible solutions, no matter how expensive they are, how wildly crazy or weird they are, write down all the possible solutions, all the possible actions you could take, to start taking steps towards solving those problems or overcoming those problems and challenges and then pick one, pick one action you could take for each problem or challenge, or just pick one challenge and work towards it but do it, take action, take action today, right now, pause this and do it, or when you finish this episode or block out some time in your calendar today or next week to do it. But simply taking action towards the resolution of your problems or challenges can massively change your perspective from pessimism to optimism, because by taking action you are moving towards the things that you want to experience and moving away from the things that you don’t want to experience. In that same way, goal setting and visualisation can be really, really, helpful and again that goes back to: what do you want instead, what do you want in your life? And, set practical goals for the things that you want to achieve.
Visualisation
But also just allow yourself, give yourself permission to visualise. What is your ideal life? What is your ideal lifestyle? What do you want to be experiencing instead of what you are currently experiencing? How do you want to feel? How do you want to be? What do you want to have? Visualise all that good stuff. And feel it, just feel it, feel what that’s going to give you, feel what that’s going to make you feel, really tap into that, and make that a part of your morning routine, if you have one or your evening routine. I would love to say that visualisation is something that I do every day, it is not, it is something that I want to do more of. It is something that I sometimes do in my morning routine, and I find it really, really, useful, because it helps me to focus on what I do want. It helps me on what I want to experience, it helps me focus on what I want instead of what I currently have, or what I want in addition to what I currently have. So, visualisation is really, really, useful; and also goal-setting, to make sure that you are taking actions you want to take to achieve the things you want to achieve, so you can experience the things that you want to experience in your life.
Review your goals, on a regular basis.
So, as we are getting towards the end of the year now, I have made a list of all the goals and the stuff that I want to achieve and do over the next few months, between now and the end of the year, and into the New Year, and I have written down my deadlines for them and I have looked at: can I reasonably achieve this in this time period? What do I need to do? So, for example, you know I do the Walk-a-1000-miles challenge, so the nature deadline is 31 December, the end of the year, I have a spreadsheet where I enter all of my miles, and that keeps me on track and I just make sure that I update that every time I go on a nature walk. So I have got 76 miles to go until the end of the year. I have more than enough time to finish, but it is cutting it a little bit close. So, what I have done is I have gone through my Google calendar and I have made sure that I have blocked out enough time in my calendar to get those walks done and get those miles in. I have got my kickboxing grading coming up in mid-December and I have not done as much preparation as I would have liked to. I have got my grading practice this Friday and I am not feeling 100% ready for it, so I have made a list of the stuff I need to do to prepare for that – I need to practice my linework, I need to practice my fitness — I need to do that daily, I need to be running on a regular basis. So, I have gone to my Google calendar and I have blocked out time to do that stuff. Some of that stuff needs to be done daily, some of that stuff needs to be done just a couple of times a week, but I have blocked out the time in my calendar.
Other stuff, I am wrapping up the bardic grade of my Druid training, so I have got some of my practicums to finish for that, I have got to review all my material, I have to write a review and send it in so that I can apply for the next year. I have got enough time to do this, but I need to make sure it happens, and I need to make sure it happens as a part of my morning ritual. So, again, that is already blocked out in my calendar because I have my morning ritual in my calendar every morning, but I need to make sure this stuff happens within those time-slots. And then other stuff like this podcast. I am aware that we are getting into the holiday season and that means it is going to be hard for me to be book calls with other people, like Jo and Joanna. It means to make sure that I have enough time in my calendar to do my solo episodes because I am going to the US in January and I am not going to do any recording from there, so I absolutely need to get this done before I go. And so I have got at least nine episodes that I need to get done, and in the pipeline to be edited, before I leave in January. Ideally, I would like to get them done before the end of the year, or before the holidays, because I tend to like to go into hibernation over the holiday season. So I haven’t done this yet, but I have gotten in touch with Jo and Joanna to see if we can get dates in the calendar, and I have got my dates for my solo episodes in the calendar, but I need to make sure that I have got all the dates for all the solo episodes and all those episodes. Anyway, you get the idea. Figure you what your goals are, what you need to do to achieve those goals, block out the time in your calendar to make sure it happens.
So, that’s kind of the review kind of stuff that you need to do, not just now as we are approaching the end of the year, but on a regular basis. I would never have achieved the walk ten thousand (not walk ten thousand {laughing}! walk-a-thousand-miles challenge last year, nor would have made as much progress on it this year, if I hadn’t created a spreadsheet to keep track of my miles. You have got to keep track of this stuff otherwise you don’t know where you are on your path to achieving your goals.
Make mindset changes
The final thing that I wanted to talk about is make changes. As you move away from focussing on what you don’t want, to focussing on what you do want, make the necessary changes that you need in your life, take the actions that you need to take to step-by-step, one step at a time, towards the things that you want to experience in your life.
So, those are my top suggestions for how to let go of pessimism for good. I really want to go into how to use mindset and energy healing techniques to shift to this optimistic perspective in life, because this is the foundation of how I have shifted. So, again, it is going back to focussing on what you want instead: what do you want to experience? What do you want to do, what do you want to be, what do you want to have? What do you want to believe about yourself? What do you want to experience? And if you are using a belief-based system like PSYCH-K®, create belief statements based on what you want to experience, and balance for them. If you are doing something more energy-focussed same thing, create your vision of what you want, create your goal, create your outcomes, and then release the energy that you need to release in order to experience those things.
It does not surprise me at all that someone who has trained in PSYCH-K®, or another technique like this, is experiencing less pessimism, because naturally in training in those techniques, or modalities, and using them, assuming that you use them beyond the actual workshop, you are training your brain to focus on what you do want, rather than what you don’t want, and that is a massive, massive, shift in and of itself, which is what I said at the beginning, I am going to say it again, it is huge. Because so many people focus on what they don’t want, and then you just get more of that, and it just drags you down into a dark pit of pessimism.
So, I honestly believe, that by using the mindset and energy-healing techniques, not only can it help you shift to an optimistic perspective in life it can radically transform your life.
So, I hope that you found this episode interesting and useful, and I hope that it helps you to let go of pessimism for good! If you have any questions like this, I welcome any podcast topics, as always, you can email me: [email protected].
If you would like to join me on Patreon, I would love that too. Head over to http://Patreon.com/HollyWorton and you can join me there. Membership starts at just one dollar a month and you will get exclusive access to content I don’t share anywhere else, including a monthly Q and A and all kinds of other stuff, including done-for-you energy work, depending on what tier you sign up at. I would love to see you there: http://Patreon.com/HollyWorton.
Thank you so much for listening, if you enjoy this episode please leave a quick review on Apple podcasts, it would mean the world to me, or recommend it to someone else. I would love for more people to discover this podcast – more people like you.
Next week’s episode, I am not sure what it is, I am hoping that it will be an episode with Jo Casey, we have had to reschedule our recording of it, so we shall see, it might be me again, it might be Jo. So, tune in next week to find out and thank you for listening and remember to visit http://HollyWorton.com/280 for the show notes on this episode.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
