This is the Most Toxic Habit in the World

Hey, what’s up, all you beautiful people? Welcome back to the podcast. So today I want to talk about a question I was asked on a recent podcast. It was a great question. I think it something a lot of people maybe have never stopped to consider. But the question was from this 20 year old kid. He’s on his way up, right? He’s moving towards his greatness. He’s moving towards success in his business. And he wants to know, what is the number one most draining habit, number one most toxic habit, that number one habit that is keeping you from moving towards your greatness.

And it’s really interesting because I have a very clear answer that I want to share with you, and I think it’s one that a lot of people wouldn’t necessarily stop to consider. When you think about negative habits, it’s really easy to think about, you know, the porn addiction, the video games, the food, the Netflix. Like, all of that stuff, it comes straight to mind, right? And that’s a habit that you execute on a daily basis. But there’s another habit that is so habitual, so instinctual, you might not even stop to consider that it is, in fact, a habit, and it’s one that you can change. And, in fact, if you want to move towards your greatness in life, it’s often not about adding new habits, not about stepping on the accelerator. It’s about removing the negative things from our life, the negative habits. And this is, I think, the most powerful habit you can remove from. From your life if you do, in fact, want to move towards your greatness.

It is this. Stop surrounding yourself with toxic, negative, pessimistic people. That is the number one, most draining habit. It’s being around negative Nancy’s eeyores, the people who always think the sky is falling, the ones who always are looking at reasons why it’s not fair. The universe is conspiring against them. The man is working to keep them down. This, that, and the other thing. It’s always something.

It’s the pessimists that believe this thing isn’t possible. That’s not for people like us. It’s the critics. It’s the skeptics. It’s the people who find all the reasons why a thing shouldn’t work. Here’s the thing that’s so interesting about this is that pessimists generally get to be right. It’s true most of the time, they’re right that the thing won’t work out. But here’s the more important truth, is that pessimists get to be right.
But optimists get to change the world. And if you’re listening to this, it means that you want to move towards your greatness. You have a higher vision for your life and your. And what you can accomplish. And to achieve even a fraction of that, it requires optimism, and it requires a belief in yourself, a belief that what you do matters and that it can make a positive impact, that you do have the ability to transform your life, to transform your identity, to become that greatest version of yourself. It requires belief. It requires optimism. It requires faith to see, because you are not yet that thing that you must be become to achieve the things that you want to achieve.
You are not that yet, but you are in the act of becoming. And that right there is an act of optimism. Now, it’s hard, because when you’re young, you don’t have a choice about this, right? You’re forced to be surrounded by your friends and your family in school, like it’s your network. And it’s so ingrained in how you see the world that it never even occurs to most people that your network, that foundational root of connection that is your friends and your family, they might be the thing that’s actually holding you back, not out of any malice or negative will. It’s just they don’t know any better. They’re propagating the mindsets, the beliefs, the pessimism, the skepticism, the criticisms that they inherited from their parents, who got it from their parents. And it was evolutionary, pretty advantageous to be the pessimist, to be the critic, to be the skeptic, because the pessimists got to stay alive. You are the ancestor of a long lineage of pessimists who, when they heard something in the brush, they assumed it was the tiger, and they ran away.

And as such, they stayed alive, even though they might have been wrong, might not have been anything, might have just been the wind. And so you have this evolutionary adaptation to be a pessimist. It is the default state of the world to be pessimistic, to be negative, to be a critic, to be a skeptic. And that is why so few people are successful, because you have to overcome that biology. And in this day and age, in this world, where we have so much opportunity and asymmetric opportunity, the number of things out there that can jump out of the weeds and kill you like a tiger in the wilderness, it’s very few and far between. There’s very few existential threats that we face on a day to day basis. And yet the upside potential of going and moving towards our greatness. It’s unlimited.

Now, I’m not saying you go cut your family and your friends out of your life right now. All I’m saying is that you remove the frequency. You reduce the frequency in which you hang out with them. You know, you don’t have to cut the habit cold turkey. You don’t have to stop the video games, the fast food. Just start to cut back on it. Start to reduce how much time you’re spending around that toxicity, that toxic energy. Because the truth is, like, you cannot be around that sort of toxic energy and not be negatively affected.

It will pull you down. So that is the number one most toxic habit is being around pessimistic, negative, skeptical, critical. People get around people who are operating on a higher level, who see the potential that you have in your life, that are optimistic about what you could do, who have wild ambitions and wild dreams, and they’re not afraid to tell the world and to move towards those dreams. Go surround yourself with those people, because they, my friend, are the world changers. And if you’re listening to this, I have a feeling that you are, too. So thank you for being here. I’ll catch you in the next episode. But until then, stay hyper focus, my friend.