My Highlights From Soundtracks by Jon Acuff
How can you turn off negativity and play your own positive soundtrack?
Hello, and welcome back. In the previous issue I shared how Successful People Shift Their Problem Focus from Daily to Monthly to Annual, and in this issue I share my personal highlights from bestselling author Jon Acuff’s book Soundtracks: The Surprising Solution to Overthinking.
By the way, I’m Kevin Kruse, founder and CEO of LEADx and NY Times bestselling author of 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management and the forthcoming 11 Secrets Successful People Know About Goal Setting. Welcome to Success & Significance - my take on health, wealth, and relationships (my “3 to Thrive”, read more here). Hit the Subscribe button below to join over 20,000 members who get weekly practical advice and wisdom from the world’s most successful people.
I’m a big believer in positive self-talk, mantras, and rehearsing the day. So I eagerly dove into Acuff’s book on how to turn off negative and limiting thinking with various mantras. Can’t say I’ll adopt any of his specific language or approach; I like my own better. But here is what I thought was worthy to highlight in my own Kindle copy.
Borrow from the Best
1. People are trying to give me money. This is the soundtrack I use when going into new business conversations or opportunities.
2. I'll feel awesome after. This is the soundtrack I turn on when it's fifteen degrees outside and I don't feel like running.
3. Spare change adds up. If my goal is to write 1,000 words, I write 1,050. If my goal is to run 3.1 miles, I run 3.3.
4. Pivot, don't panic. When the coronavirus turned my world upside down in the spring of 2020, I had a simple choice to make: panic or pivot.
Win the Week
"Writers write." That's it. If I was going to be a writer, I had to write.
Looking at the week ahead, where do you want to win with the people in your life? The reason you should ask that question is that you have a soundtrack for everyone in your life. You know that's true. Right now there are certain people who can cause a cacophony of soundtracks to play just by sending you a text message. You don't even have to read the text and you're already fired up with a heated response. Let's pretend that person's name is Karen, because it probably is.
If we had coffee and you told me, "Karen is the worst," I'd tell you to pull the thread. What's behind that? What does that mean? It might hit you immediately or it might take a few minutes, but eventually you'd probably say something like, "She only reaches out when she needs something" or "She's unqualified for her job" or "She got the promotion I wanted." We've only gone one layer deep and we've already got better soundtracks we can work on. "She only reaches out when she needs something." What's behind that? Maybe the real soundtrack is that you feel terrible when people ask you for things you can't fulfill. You hate to tell people no, and you believe the broken soundtrack that says having a boundary is selfish. What if you could retire that? The reality is that there will always be Karens at every company, but if you retire the broken soundtrack "I'm not allowed to say no," you'll feel a lot better.
Write down that new soundtrack: "I get to have boundaries." What about the next one? "She's unqualified for her job." Maybe she is—she is the worst, after all. But pull the thread. A few layers deep you could have a soundtrack that says, "She's progressed further than I have with fewer qualifications because she's braver. She's done far more with her career with far less because she's so confident. If I weren't afraid, I could too."
Where in your life do you want to succeed? Where could you be making faster, easier, better decisions? What do you want to improve? What do you want to dominate? What do you want to crush? When I asked myself that question, the answer was obvious: sales.
Don’t Fight It, Flip It
That afternoon in the driveway, I asked myself a simple question: "What would the best boss do right now?" The answer was not difficult to find. In that exact situation, the best boss would say, "You've been out of town for a few days. It's five o'clock. Go home to your family! You already worked a really full day."
Zig Your Way to Positive Thinking
Weeks later, while reading Tim Grahl's book Running Down a Dream, Ziglar popped back up. Grahl, a book marketing expert who once had five clients on the New York Times bestseller list at the same time, wrote that he did Zig's daily affirmations twice a day for thirty days.
Zig's affirmations were part of his Self-Talk Cards, but Tom told me he'd been using them for much longer than that onstage with live audiences.
"Dad used to always say, 'It's not what happens to you that determines how far you will go in life; it's how you handle what happens to you.' He was big on the difference between reacting, which is negative, and responding, which is positive.
"No," Tom replied. "We don't teach fake it till you make it. Dad believed in 'Tell the truth in advance.' The affirmations are true. Let's say you're a hundred pounds overweight and your goal is to lose that. Some people would say a positive affirmation like, 'I'm fit and trim and living life to the fullest.' But you're not and your brain knows that. It's not true and that creates cognitive dissonance [stress that occurs when your brain tries to believe multiple things that disagree with each other at the same time]. Instead, it's better to say what my friend Steyn Rossouw says: 'I'm getting fitter and fitter every day in every way.' That's true. Those words are an aspiration of where you are going."
Gather Evidence
Say to yourself, "Everything is always working out for me."
Make a Soundtrack Stick with a Symbol
Nike uses a swoosh to ensure you hear the words "Just do it" without even reading them. Every successful brand in the world is serious about symbols because they know they work.
How to Build Your Own Symbol If you want your soundtrack to stick, your symbol must be: Simple Personal Visible
Until the next issue, remember…
Impact > Income,
Kevin 🙏
If you liked this post, you’d love my books. Consider grabbing 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management or 11 Secrets Successful People Know About Goal Setting or Great Leaders Have No Rules.
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