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You’re Awesome
This episode is called You’re Awesome. Every day, my nine-year-old son goes to school. He walks up to one person every day and he looks him in the eye and says, “You’re awesome,” and he walks away. I have had my family, my four kids especially, come with us to our annual events. We do two events every year called Digital Footprint. You can find info at DigitalFootprint.net. Almost every time, almost at every event, we had Kaci my eighteen-year-old at a Grammy’s after–party. She said it there too. Almost every time, one of my kids came up to me and said, “My God, dad, everybody loves you.” I have to sit them down and say, “Kaci, I’ve told every person in this room that they’re awesome five to ten times in the last few years.” She’s like, “Really?” I explained the concept of sowing seeds of belief and positivity into other people. I can’t tell you how many times old friends have come up to me, business partners, associates, and we’ll be in a room of 10, 5, 30, 100 people. We have not been together this whole evening, but at the end of the evening, we meet up maybe at the bar or in the car ride home and they say something to me or my wife, Kerri. They’re like, “Everybody in that room loves you.” I remind them that I’ve been with these business partners and these friends for years.
I would say Steve or whatever the guy’s name I was talking to and again, this has happened to me hundreds of times in my life. I’ve told people, “Every day of my life I look someone in the eye and I genuinely tell them they’re awesome.” I don’t mean it facetiously. I often follow up with why I think they’re awesome, but every single day. Part of it is I heard a story that I never forgot years ago. I don’t know if it was in a Brian Tracy book or if I heard it from stage similar, but it goes like this. Let’s say you’re walking down Michigan Avenue and there’s a homeless person and you’re downwind. You’re walking on the sidewalk and the wind’s coming at you and you can tell from 50 feet away this man has not bathed in maybe months. It’s a pretty obnoxious odor. You get closer and closer and it’s so bad you almost have to leave the sidewalk and go into the street, but you know it will offend them. All of a sudden you get ten feet away and he looks up. Even though he’s filthy, his eyes are crystal clear. He says, “Nice bomber jacket. My brother used to have a jacket just like that. It’s really a nice jacket.” All of a sudden, there’s a paradigm shift in your body. Experts say there is nothing that man can do or say outside of pulling a knife and stabbing you that can make you think negatively or dislike him for a month. For one month, you are subconsciously and consciously going to hold positive thoughts about that person because he sincerely and truly, genuinely and emotionally complimented you.
Choose to interact with people and sow seeds of belief in them knowing that 80% of everything received now is negative. Click To TweetHere’s a question for you. You live your life and you have a choice. You can live your life and interact with people, you cannot interact with people or you can choose to interact with people and sow seeds of belief in them knowing that 80% of everything received now is negative. Negative from coworkers, negative from bosses, negative from the news, negative from the newspaper. Self-Talk. 85% of every thought of self-talk is negative. It has been since 1980. We live in a negative society. How about being a beacon of positive inside your company, inside your family, inside your friendships? It’s going to feel very corny at first. At first, my son did not want to do it, but now it’s like a drug. It’s a habit. He’s addicted. He comes in every day and tells me who he told that day he was awesome too. Why not make a commitment to tell one person every day they’re awesome? If they give you the “Who farted?” look, tell him why. I hope this helps. Take care.
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