Liberate Yourself with Positive Thinking

Introduction – Feeling heavy; ironic start to “positive thinking” episode.

Liberate yourself with positive thinking. Brandon, how’s it going, man?I’m just laughing like I I got on this call with you and I was just complaininglike I get on it. I’m just like complaining about life, being a victim to life, and then it’s like, let’s dothe qu let’s do the like intro thing like liberate yourself with positive thinking.You sound like like a radio DJ. You just you just got done telling melike, Ty, man, I’m feeling kind of heavy today. I’m kind of feeling moaning and complaining about life.It’s like, oh man. What’s the topic today? It’s positive thinking. You’re like, oh.Oh jeez. Yeah. Isn’t that a smack to the face? Yeah, I know.Oh, live what you preach, you know. Come on, buddy. Yeah. Hey. Hey. By the timewe’re done today, you’re going to have it all turned around. It’s going to be I This might just be the very topic thatI need today. So, yeah.Um, by the way, I’m right now I’m drinking this is not uh sponsored by, but I’m drinking a liquid death. This isnot a near beer, nor is it a real beer. It’s for anyone. I don’t drink beer

Soccer Lesson – Daughter’s game; staying ready and keeping a good attitude.

while I podcast, but liquid death is great.It’s just trendy trendy water. Yeah. Yeah. I was listening to our pastepisode and I was like, man, near beer at seven. Like that was that is pretty nuts.You guys, you the worst part about it is it isn’t that you got curious and liketook it or tried it or anything. The worst part is is that you actually liked it and we liked it at seven.That is crazy. That’s that’s that’s gnarly, man. Yeah. So, umYeah. Well, uh Brad, let’s liberate me today, Tyler. Liberate me. Let’s do this. I want to start I want to start withsomething first and we’re going to kind of lead into another story today. But, uh this last week,this last week, it was kind of a kind of a cool thing. Um it didn’t quite pan out how I hoped it would, but again, I don’tlive according to preference, so that’s fine. But um you know so he says that so nonchalant again againI’m just again I’m just totally zened out here you know just accept everythingcling to nothing. Exactly. So so my daughter you heardabout it like she’s been playing on the high school soccer team and she’s basically in the rotation where she waskind of like right on the bubble of sometimes she gets some playing time sometimes she wouldn’t. She’s a sophomore and uh towards the end of theseason as they get closer and closer to the state games, the team the the roster tightens up even further and so she getsfurther and further down the bench of maybe not not getting a lot of playing time. And then for the last severalweeks, it’s just been this constant like kind of discussion back and forth abouther feelings and how she wishes she was getting more playing time, but how she understands and talk about being a goodteammate. And and one of the things that we’ve been discussing over and over again is always still keeping a positivemental attitude and being at the ready whenever your number is called. Right.So, so she’s, you know, back and forth with this. were fighting all along, butI think she does a really good job with the team and finally they get to the state championship uh just la thisweekend and the team is playing and they’re tied. I think it was like 33and with two minutes left in the game, she hasn’t played at all in like the last, you know, much in the last likefour games. With two minutes left in the game, they they the coach goes, “Hey, I need someone to add some spark and putsome pressure on. Go out there.” So, she runs out there and she just runs out. She looked like she kind of looked likeRudy at the end of the movie when he finally gets in the game. He just like runs out and there’s passing just like so excited, you know, like she goes runout and she plays really really hard and then they play her for the first few minutes of the overtime period too. Andthe whole time I was just thinking in my head like this is where it all comes to fruition. We’ve been preaching positivemental attitude the whole time. She’s finally ready. She’s going to get her shot. She’s going to score the golden goal and it’s going to be this wonderfulthing. Mhm. And uh she didn’t end up scoring the golden goal and her team actually ended up losing in a shootout. But itwas kind of a cool thing to to to kind of at least have that moment where her keeping her head in the game and stayingpositive and trying to be a good teammate sort of kind of came to fruition and and like paid off with anopportunity that she was given. Yeah. Right. Yeah. That’s awesome. I you know I you we expect her to do theflying header and getting knocked out by the goalie and stuff, but likethat the stars don’t always align, but I do got to say it’s pretty awesome.She’s uh she’s playing in the state championship game on the varsity team as a sophomore, though. Like to to put thatin context, it’s pretty awesome. And um that’s it was just it was just really cool tosee her have the opportunity. And really the the principle here and that’s what we want to tie into today with the episode is how do you how do you try tomaintain and keep a positive mental attitude whenyou know sometimes life doesn’t really make it easy. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I I’d really I’d like totell a story um about one of my favorite people in the wholewide world and um I consider him like a brother to me. Um his name’s uh well I

Meet “Hot Rod” – Brazilian friend’s story; kidney stone rescue in Utah.

call him Hot Rod. Um and the these are kind of big type stories but um a littledifferent. Um Hot Rod is from Brazil. He’s from uh a place called uh PriceCababa down in Brazil. And he how I got to know him was he just when he was incollege, he just randomly wanted to come to the United States to just kind of tour around and visit. And so he flew toSan Francisco and uh he he didn’t have a place tostay. He just was like on an adventure. He’s from Brazil. he doesn’t speak English.Um, and so he, you know, figures out a, you know, a few friends in San Francisco.And he was here for like months. Um, and then one of his buddies is like, “Hey,we should we should go like we should go to like Utah. Let’s go.” This is the middle of the winter. This is January.And so they hop on a bus and he heads up he ends up in Park City. And in ParkCity, he gets a really bad kidney stone. And so it’s the middle of winter. He’sat a bus stop with a kidney stone. Can’t And he knows nobody. He knows nobody. And he can’t speakEnglish.We shouldn’t be laughing at that. This story is not a story about stupidity. This is this is going somewhere else. But um so so Hot Rod’sup there in Park City and he doesn’t know what to do. So he calls home andour brother, our younger brother served in Brazil and he he’s like, “Do do youguys know anybody in Utah that can help him?” He’s in Utah and one of his bestfriends um Rex knew and uh and and soEddie was his name and Eddie actually lived with us for a little while. And so Eddie was like, “Oh yeah, the Patricksare there. They’ll they’ll help him.” So we drove up to Park City and there was Hot Rod, just a stranger thinking he’sdying, thinking he doesn’t know what’s going on. He’s just in pain. And uh we pickHot Rod up and and uh that’s how we got to know Hot Rod. And so he ends up living at our house for like two months.Um, so but as we get as we get to know Hot Rod, at first, you know, his Englishis he’s just learning it. He’s getting better. Um, but I noticed something about him um pretty early on. UhI I teach my kids three rules in life that I think make you completelyresilient to everything. Um and and and they’re the rules to live in growth

The 3 Rules – Do your best, believe in yourself, have fun.

mindset. And hot rod lives these rules. So my three my three rules are do yourbest, believe in yourself, and have fun. Like those three things. Do your best,believe in yourself, and have fun. So here we are. We pick up Hot Rod, and he like is a fish out of water. He’srecovering from this kidney stone, but he’s just fun. Like immediately westarted like joking with you and Yeah. You taught him English using my anatomy. Yeah, we taught him English. We westarted like just assimilating him in to life and he just had this positiveattitude. He would he’d do his best and he’d have fun everything we did. And umso over the course of these couple of months, we just became really good friends. And yeah, I did. I might havetaught him that like, you know, deer were I I might have taught him those were called wild cows.Yeah. You’re teaching him English instead of deer. You’re like those wild cows. So he’s walking around telling everybody else, “Look, wild cows.”Wild cows. The the worst people to teach English to this guy would have been you and Rex. It’s funny because I I went visited himin Brazil and he’s like, “Be I I can’t understand English, but I can understandyou. Everything you say, I understand.You taught him his own dialect. His own dialect of English.”And uh and and it is weird because we do kind of have that bond where we speak a different language but we don’t like wedon’t like we can speak to each other. We understand each other and um so fastforward uh you know this was this was 20 years ago. This is 25 years ago

Million-Dollar Loss – Betrayal, forgiveness, and “It’s OK.”

actually. And we’ve kept in contact. He’s come up here a couple of times. Um,I’ve gone down to Brazil and visited him and uh, like anybody, life can kick youaround and and uh, and be challenging and and hot rod he doesn’t I call himhot rod. um he doesn’t have uh you know his life isn’t isn’t terribly hard butum a couple things have happened in his life and um he was in town and we werewe were hanging out with our cousin and we were in town and our cousin was complaining about something maybe youcould tell this story Tyler. Yeah. So, so we do this trip with one of our cousins fairly regularly, littleboys trip, and he was we’re just kind of catching up. And our cousin was telling this story and he was just like kind of complaining about some things going onat like his business practice and a few things going on with some of his relationships and he’s just kind of likejust just kind of being like negative, you know? And then it then it ends and we we’re talking that talk that talkends and then it turns over to Hot Rod and then um and then they’re like so what what happened to Hot Rod? And thenHot Rod tells this story of how he like was swindled out of likea million dollars. Almost a million dollars. Almost a million US dollars by one of his best friends.Yeah. Like he was it was supposed to be some kind of investment, but instead the guy basically just took all the money andcut bait and and left. And we’re like, “Oh my gosh.” Like, and all of us in the car like, well, hot Hot Rod’s tellingthe story are like, “Oh my gosh, let’s go find that guy. Let’s go do this. Let’s go.” Like, you know, like, “Oh,that is so bad. That is so wrong.” And Hot Rod just sits there with like this little smile on his face. He’s like,”Yeah, it’s okay.” All he said Ally said was, “It’s okay. It’s okay.It’s okay. It’s okay.” And And then he said he said he’s still my friend.Yeah. And he said it in the most like gentle um genuine tone like it’s okay.It’s all right. It’s okay. And and then he said something after that. He said, you know, uh we’re stillyoung. We got a life we got a lot of life to live. Uh like there’s some things to be excited about. We got a lotof life to live. We’re young. Yeah. You know, and I’m thinking like here we are like our one cousin’s kindof complaining about that. And and how did he respond when Rod said that? He instantly was just like like I gotnothing to complain about. He’s like, “Why am I complaining?” He’s like, “Why am I complaining? Thisdude just lost a million dollars and he’s fine.” his best friend swindled him out of it,you know, and he’s got this attitude of like, so whatever, you know, it’s life.It’s life. That’s how life goes, you know, like there’s the bad things happen. Andum the thing about it is is like his whole demeanor is that like it’s notjust words. It’s a genuine like I can accept life as it comes and um Hot Rodhas a lot of good things in life like a lot of really beautiful things but but like anybody bad things happen toeverybody and I I think his attitude of hey you doyour best and you believe in yourself and you have fun. Um, it like reallyleads to when those bad things happen, you can still find hope, you can stillfind purpose, and you can still find some learning through all of it.Yeah. And I I think one of the the biggest parts of that is is that somehowhe had tapped into this thing of being able to accept life on its termsas life instead of always wondering and complaining about why it’s not fair to me or why did this happen to me orwhatever else. Just those three things you’re talking about, Brand. And if they were talkingabout those three secrets to life, you know, the positive mental attitude, do your best, believe in yourself, and havefun. what what would be a massive piece ofsuffering for most people becomes probably he still probably had some someirritability about it but he suffered way less over the amount of time that it had happened by simply just by shiftingthe way he looked at it. I Tyler I was uh I was I was blown away this past

Mindset Shift – Pain vs. suffering; Viktor Frankl and choice.

week. Um, and we’ve run groups for years, you you and I, andum, but we just started this new, uh, foundations group that we’ve been advertising on the show. And, and, um, II was blessed to sit with the the women in that group and do a breakout. And,um, in that in that room, it there’s a lot of pain that there’s a lot ofheartache. um some of the most difficult pain and complex pain that there is. Andwe were doing this this assignment where they’re talking about their their mission statement for recovery and whatthey really envision and want to do. And and I know there’s a lot of pain in there and I know there’s a lot of reasonto um be a victim and because in many ways they have been a victim. Um, but Istarted to listen to these mission statements and I just heard um women who were resilient and womenwho were going to find the the uh the reason and the purpose behind all ofthis pain. And I was so impressed by each one of them taking ownership of of their lifeand the situation and and knowing that they can move forward even when these really hard badthings happen. Yeah. And I think that’s, you know, I was on the other side of that, Bren. Iwas in the men’s side and they were sharing their their statements as well. And what really struck me is is uh theywere many in fact I would say the majority of the statements had to do with stepping further into their realidentity living authentic living authentically and living with integritylike all the principles you know we talk about here on the podcast not a single one of themlike had some kind of like victim statement inside their mission statement.Yeah. This was a statement regardless of what may come. This is who I want to be and how I want to live. It wasn’t, oh,I’m going to do all of this so that it was this is who I want to be. Right. Right.And I think I think taking that attitude is like it’s it’s a way of inoculatingyourself in some ways against a lot of the pain and suffering that goes on in this world.But we’re not saying that you don’t feel pain. No, you’re still even going through all of that,right? Right. There’s still going to be pain. There’s going to be discomfort. That’s unavoidable. The world the world we livein, even if you do everything right, you know, in quotes whatever right is umyou’re still you’re still in a world where there will be pain.You can’t avoid it. Right. And it’s just how I think it’s how youview the pain that really matters. Um, if and this is where that fixed mindsetcan really really cause problems is if I view the painas like God doing something to me, punishing meor you just making my life miserable, then I’m going to be more miserable as aresult of that pain. But if I view that Go ahead. No, no. I was just going to say I always I alwayskind of for myself I look at it as there’s going to be what is that thing grandpa Harris used to always say? Ithink pain is mandatory, misery is optional. It’s like the life of pain happens and then theway that we attribute it and the story we give to it will either make us find some meaning and purpose in it andsuffer less or it’ll add to our suffering. And a lot of times we’re the ones who are responsible for how muchextra suffering we want to put on the top of it. So, can I always is it possible for meto always think positively about my pain? Well, I I think it’s I think it’s moreof like a a practice of recognizing when because our brains are slantedtowards the negative for for good reasons to help us stay alive and to protect us because anything that’s athreat to us, if we see it with negativity, we we more likely to do some protecting in that. But I think it’s theexercise more to become conscious and aware that we are the ones who are responsible for the story and we caneither increase the quality of our life or decrease the quality of our life depending on what we choose to believeinside some of those circumstances, right? And and and that’s really the whole wetalk about this a lot like the Victor Frankle thing of of we always have the power to choose what we think and whatwe feel between stimulus and response like we we we have that space. So alongcomes life here’s the triggers. Here’s the stimulus. We can always stop and be like okay what’s happening here? Um, Ican choose to I I can choose to think about this however I I want to. And and reallythat’s what Hot Rod did in that moment where our cousin’s like, you know, complaining and then Hot Rod’s like,”Well, let me show you that you can choose to think differently about this thing.” And in his broken English, heshowed that. And and we we’re all like, “Oh my god.” Like they started calling him the BrazilianJesus. He just totally like he just he justpreached the perfect sermon in just his humble broken English kind of he said two words. Yeah.It’s okay. It’s okay. I still love him.What? Where do you come from? Where?

Radical Acceptance – Forgiveness stories and choosing love over bitterness.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s It’s kind of like that idea of, you know, um I we tell stories about GrandpaHarris all the time, too. But remember like grandpa would teach. He was, you know, this old man. He he substitutetaught every day. He had this little book he’d keep in his pocket of likeund and something jokes. Half of them hewrote that weren’t very good. Like but he’d go to his teaching gig every day and I’m sure the students got sick ofit. But he’d stand up there and he’d be like, “All right, I got a confession to make you guys.” And then he’d say, “Ihave AIDS.” And then everyone be like, “What?” And then he’d like point at his ears. islike hearing aids, right? You know, in in the early 90s and stuff, thatprobably wasn’t a very sensitive joke. No, not not at all. But but here isgrandpa, he’s deaf. He can’t hear a thing. And instead of like cursing theworld for having gotten sick and lost his hearing, he’s he’s embracing life onits terms and saying, “Well, like this is the reality and I might as well have some fun with it.” Right. Well, yeah. One of one of the ultimateexamples of this and I I think I brought this up before on the show is um youlisten to the letter the podcast the letter. Oh, so good. It’s one of my favorite of all time. Umand and and we have a personal stake in that having having been right right in themiddle like watching that unfold. Um and and without getting into thewhole story of it all, but this uh this woman, her son was murdered by this guy.And somehow that like like he levied I think the most painful thing that aperson possibly could on somebody else like to take their child. Um I there’snothing worse, right? So, how does she go from, you know, there’s a there’s aclip in the in the podcast where she’s saying to this guy who murdered her son, I love you. I love you. You know, andand it’s like nonchalant because she has a relationship a relationship with this guy because she’s forgiven him and she she actuallyloves him. And um and and I look at that and I’m like, how does she go from thatamount of pain and that easy to be a victim to this guy who shot her son inthe back of the head to I love you. And I’m not saying everybody should dothat or that’s that’s the, you know, how it should go for everybody, but for her,she’s inspiring to me because she chose how she wanted to view the situation.She chose how she wanted to respond and she chose to to apply love to the situation instead of hate. And um itit’s pretty inspiring. It’s pretty incredible. I put I try to put myself in I can only imagine like in those shoesand I wonder if like in some ways even though it’s not the naturalresponse to get to that point that she did was almost its own survival responsebecause how do you navigate this world otherwise? You know, you still got to find a waythat there’s to to find that still there’s still something good in this world and there’s still something positive andand in a certain sense you have to create that by the way that you chooseto approach the world and see it. And you know, we got a lot of people listening to us right now who are in some pretty dark places. You know, it’sand and I don’t want us to have this episode be, hey everybody, like hurry and be happy about what’s happening toyou. Yeah. That’s not what this is about. But but inside of those struggles thatinevitably anybody is listening to this is in right now, there is an opportunityfor freedom. And that that pathway is through those things you talked about, Brandon, doingyour best. Like there’s there’s already there’s already peace of mind in doing your best even if you don’t control theoutcomes, right? Believing in yourself. That means knowing yourself. That means going into yourself and becoming awareof who you are and then living according to your god-given values and abilities,right? And then of course the choice to have fun. Like I was telling my daughter this on the way, she was on the way toschool today. She turned on this song that was heavy. It was like really sad and I’m like, “Oh, she must be having a rough day today.” So we had a littlediscussion on the drive to school and and I said, “I relate to this. Like there are some days where it’s justhard, you know?” And I said, “But you know what’s also interesting is like look up right now.” And we’re drivingtowards her school and like her school’s facing these mountains and the sun’s just barely starting to hit the tops ofthese white covered mountains and just like lighting them up. Mhm. And I was like, even inside of theheaviness that you could feel with just a slight shift in perspective, there’s also at our fingertips always theopportunity for peace, for joy, for calmness, for happiness. They they allcoexist with each other. And some people get stuck in the trap of the pit and they forget that they can climb out andalso actually enjoy life, too. Yeah. Yeah. it. And I think that’s the

Closing – Gratitude, beauty in hardship, “keep on keepin’ on.”

na that’s the nature of it is you like if you climb a mountainum it’s steep and it’s hard to climb and you can sit and wallow about howmiserable it is to climb it. Um so then why do people hike?Yeah. Right. Do you know what I mean? Like why do they do it? um they do it because it feeds theirsoul and it brings them life and um it also takes them to to places of beautyand I think that analogy actually applies to life in general like we’reall on the battlefield some of us are pretty bludgeoned up like but we can look at that battlefield and be likethis is a freaking adventure like it hurts it’s painful but it’s also like achallenge and here we are. And um and I’m grateful to be on this battlefieldversus why me? Why do I have to be on this battlefield? And um and when I I think of Hot Rod andjust that little that little it’s okay is kind of like there’s a lot of life left.The wisdom the wis there’s a lot of life left. There’s a lot the wisdom of of like I understand what the battlefieldis in those two little words. It’s okay. is it hit it hit the rest of us like ohhe understands it differently and because he understands it just a little bit different. His world is different.He he bring he has light inside of him still even after so much pain anddarkness and and he could he could absolutely snuff that out for good reason.Yeah. Right. I find myself even cringing as you say that, Brandon, because if I still were to lose a million dollars toone of my best friend, even after listening to Hot Rod, I wouldn’t react that way.Yeah, I don’t know. I bet you could get there. I’m not sure I’d react that way reallyin instantly. Um even though I would like to because I can see I think the thing is Bren is is it was the freedomyou could feel from him and out of him. It wasn’t just the words he used. It was like there was no tension in hisresponse. It was like yeah that’s life. Like it’s okay. Yeah. You know like it was the feeling and theenergy of that freedom and softness more than the words itself. And I’m thinking I would love to be there. I don’t knowthat I would be instantly. Well and and I I think instantly is notthe is not like the the norm nor should you expect that of yourself.There’s always a stage of grief. there’s always a process of acceptance and partof that is a resistance against the painful reality. Um, but as long as we’re able to recognize where we’re atand know where we want to get to get to that place of peace and acceptance and II think it’s of praising God um for the lessons for the life that wehave. As long as as long as that’s what we’re working toward, then that’s beautiful. That’s okay.Yeah. Amen. Good topic today, Brandon. For some reason, I don’t know why, and Idon’t know if I should recommend this because it’s been so long since I’ve seen it, but I’m having I’m having the movie Simon Burch run through my headright now. I’ve never seen that. You never seen Simon Burch? I don’t even know what you’re talking about.It’s about a little kid who’s not like all the rest of the kids. I was just thinking of your three things. The doyour best, believe in yourself, and have fun. Y like he doesn’t really fit in, but he the whole through the whole movie hesays, “I’m going to make a difference in the world. I’m going to make a difference in the world, but he’s just like small and out of place andeverything, but by the end of the movie, there’s some ways that he makes some difference in the world.” And uh um buthe lives those three things, too. So, that’s probably why I’m thinking that, but I’m afraid I’m afraid of recommending it because I can’t rememberall the content in the movie. So, so what’s it called? Simon Burch. Simon Burch.Okay. Well, Tyler did not recommend that. I’m recommending that you watch it, Brandon. I want you to watch it,Brandon. Yeah. So, there’s just one uh one uhcomment that came through here and we’ll end it. It says, “Um, I love this. Saturday on the trail was beautiful withsnow falling and sunlight, even a tiny rainbow, and the wind was blowing superhard and cold. Both things at the same time. Beauty with hardship.” Beautifully said.I love it, man. Thank you. Thanks for sharing that. So, um, all right, you guys. Uh, hopefully this is meaningfulto you. Hopefully you’re able to find that positive mental attitude, the growth mindset that that that leads usto freedom. And, um, until next time, keep on keeping on. Hot Rod. Love you,man.