SOLO | Make Money Without Falling for Self-Help Myths, part 1

0:00You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by gohighlevel.com for a free 30-day trial of the best all-in-one digital marketing software tool on the planet. Just go to gohighlevel.com slash traps What's going everybody welcome back to the show today? It's just me you and the mic we're talking a little bit about some of the things that I've learned over the years and I thought it would be kind of fun today to debunk a few self-help tropes that are often heard and regurgitated and then never studied or fact checked and then just continued to be regurgitated over and over again this is sort of where the self-help industry can fall short and though I am a big proponent of self-improvement and trying to become the best version of yourself if You are only always in pursuit of the best version of yourself then you can sort of reinforce the negativity loop of I am not currently enough and if you don't believe that you're ever enough

1:02then that's probably going to have a long-term impact on overall fulfillment and life happiness even if you've achieved a lot even if you become a much better version of yourself even if you Have attained this higher level or higher awareness or whatever you want to call it even if you've gotten there You still have this inner belief that you're just not enough because there's always you know There's always the next step. There's always this version of myself that I'm chasing and in some ways that can be healthy In other ways it can be unhealthy So today I want to go over some of the ways that it can be unhealthy some of the ways that it is actually Probably hurting you For to follow some of this advice. So the first one that we're going to talk about is Manifestation or the law of attraction that you can manifest anything with just the law of attraction The claim is that if you think visualize or vibe Correctly the universe will deliver to you whatever you want on a silver platter and the evidence as you can imagine if you think about it a little bit more Just doesn't say that at all. There's a lot of attractions popularized in new thought and books like the secret

2:07I think there's also a documentary or like show or something about the secret But it has no demonstrable scientific basis and is widely regarded as pseudoscience This is where we get into the prosperity gospel type stuff like if you and to be to be clear a lot of these things can actually work If you believe that they work hard enough meaning that the placebo effect Is actually very very powerful So you might you might if you internalize them is basically sort of like any sort of religious dogma any any religious dogma that you have It's like you can internalize this belief and then you can find as much evidence as you want to support that belief and The same thing goes for things like the law of attraction Reviews aimed at the general public and health professionals explicitly note that there is no concrete evidence that a metaphysical Like attracts like law exists or That thoughts alone change External reality some studies suggest that people who buy into strong manifestation beliefs may take more financial risks and show

3:11Higher susceptibility to bankruptcy because they overestimate positive outcomes and underestimate real world Constraints that that last piece is actually one that sort of surprised me a little bit because in my mind It was I sort of looked at the lodge a law of attraction for a long time is just as a bit essentially pseudoscience something that was just like a prosperity gospel Esk But in my mind it was like, but there's no harm You know, I mean like if you want to believe it believe it as it doesn't doesn't affect me at all If it's useful to you and it doesn't harm others then sure go for it But there's actually some studies now that are suggesting that this is actually not useful to you and in in fact it is harmful to you to engage in things like the secret or the law of attraction That you're taking these big financial risks without doing the proper vetting of The opportunity or the risk at hand And you guys know I am a big proponent of taking big risks and I have historically taken really big risks Some of which may have been dumb some of which didn't make sense on paper some of which didn't end up working out for me

4:13But some of them ended up actually working out for me very well So I'm a I'm a big fan of taking risks, but not at the Not for The purpose of just taking the risk Like you can't look at somebody and go like well, hey, they they're taking big risks. That means I got to take big risks It's like okay, sure, but not just for the sake of taking the risk you have to you have to measure the risk against the reward You have to look at the potential possible outcomes and say hey, what is the best case scenario here And then go to the opposite direction and say what is the worst case scenario here? What is going to happen if the worst case scenario actually unfold? What am I going to am I going to be okay with that? Am I going to be Financially steady? Am I going to be able to put food on the table for my children if this risk doesn't pan out Like what is the actual worst case scenario here? What's the best case scenario? And is this where is that best case scenario worth Potentially having to deal with this worst case scenario and sometimes it's going to be yes

5:15Sometimes it's going to be a no But just having this sense of like positivity that it's just going to like like it's it's it's gonna work It's going to work and and let me just sit on it and manifest it into my life and Thorough up a vision board about it like that's not going to be the thing that makes it work So it actually could be somewhat detrimental to you to believe in some of these things now what's partly true Positive expectations can change your behavior. You may notice opportunities more take more action persist longer Which can improve outcomes? This is psychology. It's not magic So what's partly true about this is if you do change this sort of what I was talking about early about the placebo effect Is that if you can change your expectations then that can positively affect the behavior around Your desire to do this thing So there's a lot of successful people that I've talked to on the show people that I haven't talked to on the show But I've heard on other podcasts or other books or whatever talk about They're their delusional amount of self-belief when they they even look back on themselves as a young kid

6:19Trying to figure this thing out and they go I don't I honestly have no idea where that belief came from I just believed that it was going to happen However It did not ever stop with that belief. I never met one person who's wildly successful Who is just like I had this delusional amount of self-belief as a child or as a as a teenager or as a young adult And then all I did was believe it hard enough and then I woke up and all my dreams came true No, it's that they believed it hard enough that that belief actually affected their Their own action it affected the way that they thought about structuring their day It affected the way that they worked on the thing that they were doing that it was followed up with a massive amount of of action and then In continued persistence maintained consistency over a long period of time the desire to learn more about the field that they're in All of those things actually do help improve outcomes and all of those things can be obviously affected By the positive belief that everything's going to go the way that you want it to go when you when you start on this journey

7:22So positive expectations can change your behavior But ultimately the behavior is what creates the outcome. It's not the belief in the outcome So yeah, it's not you know, this is not the this is not the universe's version of Amazon Prime You know what I mean, that's not just like let me think about this hard enough and then two days shipping It's going to show up on my front door and I'll have everything I ever wanted. That's not how it works. You have to actually Like the book the benefit of the delusional belief is that that delusional belief will have the ability potentially to influence your decisions to Have have effects on your on your action that you're taking on a daily basis And then that will have the ability to change the outcome So sorry for those you listening that love the secret To read you what the science says what the evidence says. So don't get mad at me. Get mad at the science Or get mad at the people who are preaching manifestation rather when they know it's a lot more to do With the work that they did once they actually believed in the positive outcome

8:22Number two, this is sort of along the same lines about positive thinking Just think positive everything will work out positive thinking alone solves problems and negativity is always bad So high quality health system sources like the male clinic summarized that positive thinking and optimism are correlated with better health outcomes longer lifespan lower depression less distress and pain better cardiovascular outcomes and better coping under stress Reviews of psychological intervention in interventions show that training optimism or positive effect can improve some health markers in specific clinical populations, but These benefits come from real cognitive and once again behavioral changes Not from pretending that everything is fine So this can sort of be one of those almost self fulfilling prophecies like It it works better if you are already winning It doesn't necessarily turn you into a winner when your actions predict that you're going to lose

9:24Meaning that if you if you are somebody Who is chronically overweight who is sort of depressed who is By all by all metrics by all external markers not successful Even when it comes to happiness or health the relationships or any of these things if you're in this negative Sort of mill you in your day-to-day life then just thinking positively will not do much for you Because there's no evidence that you're actually doing anything to change the outcome itself So it it cannot you can almost be a negative effect because There's such a stark contrast Between what you're telling yourself about yourself and how you know yourself to actually be if that makes sense So if you are constantly believing that you're going to have this positive health outcome But you're actively choosing to not exercise to not go for walks to not go to the gym to not eat healthy

10:25Then it can have a negative effect on your mental state because you're telling yourself this version of an internal identity That your external actions do not match at all and the gap between that becomes too big for your brain To build a bridge for and that will actually make your situation much worse So the real benefit comes from the actual cognitive and behavioral changes reframing coping skills Abbuilding healthier behaviors Not just from pretending everything is fine to just be like I'm gonna think positive about it You know, it's like okay think positive But you also have to take the action of somebody who's achieving these outcomes So so this toxic positivity where you just suppress all negative emotions It's quote-unquote negative emotions things that you've been told are bad emotions And then refusing to acknowledge the problems in your life because you're just gonna be positive about it It's widely criticized in clinical and popular writing because it blocks Realistic problem solving any emotional processing if you are refusing to admit that there's a problem

11:26Then you can't process that problem emotionally correctly And then you cannot build a solution to the problem like we are as human beings We are problem solvers the only way that anybody has ever made money on the face of this planet is through solving problems whether you're employee You're not pretty or you're an investor Your job is to solve problems and you will get paid proportionally to the size of the problems that you know how to solve So if you never if you're if you're so in this mindset of this toxic positivity Then that that you refuse to recognize the problem to begin with then you by definition will not even think through any solution For the problem and the problem will just become more pervasive. So is it helpful? Yes, it can be helpful But typically only to the degree that only to the degree that will actually bring real cognitive and behavioral changes in your life And self-help culture often encourages skipping the feeling and the processing step and jumping straight to just

12:26You know writing some positive affirmations which can end up backfiring for for people dealing with like real Stress or serious trauma or real actual problems in their life So try to distinguish you know realistic optimism Which is which is you know acknowledging reality then focusing on what you can influence what you can control And then changing your behavior to solve those problems So distinguish the realistic optimism from just utter denial and toxic Positivity so the science says optimism is healthy when it helps you face hard things and take better action Not when it tricks you into pretending that nothing is wrong Hey guys Travis here just letting you know that sometimes on the show I go a little bit longer I try to keep these things these solo shows pretty short like 10 to 15 minutes But sometimes when I get going I just can't stop if you know what I mean So this if you're listening to this message that means that this episode is being put into two parts And the first part is now coming to a close so be sure to tune into the next solo show to hear part two of this episode

13:31Thanks for tuning in catch you next time