Shi:

All right. So, let’s get into kind of some ideas and thinking around integrating some of the best practices for a positive mental mindset because we can talk about the importance of it and we can talk about the reasons why, but maybe you’re getting to the point where you’re like, all right, but like how do I integrate it? And how does this actually look like in real life? So, let’s talk about that.

Kay:

All right. So, our favorite example of this in practicality actually comes from the happiest place on earth. Now, if you have ever been to Disneyland or Disney World, or even just downtown Disney, you know that there’s a lot of intention put behind creating a magical environment where anyone can have a good time.

Shi:

And so maybe you’re thinking this isn’t the best place to talk about positive mental mindset and positive mental attitude because it’s pretty easy to have a positive mental mindset when you’re in the happiest place on Earth. But let us tell you a story. We were doing one of our Disney trips as a family and I was in the bathroom, and I was in there by myself. Everybody was waiting outside, but I could hear in the stall next to me, a grandmother and a let’s say four-ish year old having an everyday moment. They were arguing about pulling the pants up, getting the toilet flushed. Don’t open the door before I am done. No, no, don’t grab that. The kids starting to melt a little bit. They come out, they wash their hands, they’re going through all of it. And I’m just sitting there listening, realizing that we have all these everyday interactions and functions that still had to happen even in the most magical place on earth.

Kay:

So, as Shila and I were reflecting on that story later, she’s sharing with me about this everyday moment that she found inside the magic of Disney. We had started to kind of put the dots together into the fact that well, if there could be everyday moments inside the magic that is Disneyland or Disney World, depending on which one you’ve been to. Could that mean that there’s also magic inside everyday moments?

Shi:

And for us, I mean, it seems simple now when we kind of verbalize and articulate it, but it was a really beneficial aha for us. This moment of clarity that the yin and the yang of it existed that for every action, there is an equal opposite reaction that if there was this presence of everyday moments, even in the magic, even in the happy, then there was also the presence of the magic and the happy in the everyday mundane moments and being able to channel that when you’re in those times of just maybe drudgery or maybe worse, some kind of massive challenge or issue that you’re trying to overcome then you can grab onto that spark of magic or try to find it. Your attitude can help you do that because it shifts your focus on looking for the magic rather than obsessing on the drudgery.

Kay:

You know, I wanted to drill down really quick on what Shila just said there which is that shift of your focus onto the magic instead of the everyday moment. If you are a miserable human being and you go to Disneyland, no amount of Disney is going to make you a non-miserable human being when you leave Disney and the same thing goes for if someone is a positive person inside impossible circumstances, they will continue to be a positive person. Now, one of our very favorite examples of this comes from a book called “Man’s Search for Meaning” by the author, Viktor Frankl.

Shi:

If you’ve never heard of Viktor Frankl’s story, he is an Auschwitz survivor from the Holocaust. Talk about someone going through the most challenging, horrific thing and the big lesson that he learned, and he wrote about in his book, and this is a direct quote, “Everything can be taken from a man, but one thing; the last of the human freedoms- to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Kay:

Now, Shila and I often talk about how a person who has that misery on the inside will express it no matter where they are, but that when you understand that that misery is that ultimate choice, it’s the final human freedom that someone can take away from you. The choice to either be miserable or be positive, have that positive mental mindset. Now, it doesn’t mean that you’re not going to face miserable situations. Viktor Frankl says this quote. I mean, but the dude spent six years in a concentration camp. Talk about the absolute worst of what a human can possibly go through.

Having your family ripped away from you and murdered and knowing that that happened to them, all of these things and he still says that the one thing that they couldn’t take away was his right to choose his attitude. So, how important is it that when we are having those mundane moments that we’re searching for the magic and when we’re in the magic that we’re not allowing the mundane to necessarily seep in too much because that’s all our choice of where we point the spotlight of our focus.