Pathological Positivity

Think you know what positivity is? Think again. This is pathological positivity where psychologist and author, doctor Paul Jenkins, challenges conventional thinking, explores the science of positivity, and talks with extraordinary people who put it into practice. Real psychology, remarkable stories, a radically different way to live. And now, here's your host, doctor Paul. Hello, my friend. This is doctor Paul. Episode seven twenty six. This episode is titled pathological positivity, which is actually the new name of the podcast itself. This is a new name, a powerful mission. So let's jump right in. Pathological positivity? Now that's an interesting combination of words. This brings up curiosity, maybe even some confusion from time to time. It's actually the title of my first book. Pathological Positivity. Let me give you a little background on where that actual phrase came from because when I was writing the book, I shared with my creative editor, Thomas Cantrell, the the brilliant Thomas Cantrell. I shared with him that I've been accused of being pathologically positive. And Thomas stopped me right there. He said, wait. What? Wait. Say that again. What did you just say? And I said, I've been accused of being pathologically positive. He said, that's it. That is the title. And he meant the title of the book. We had been going back and forth about what to call this work, this seminal work of my career, and we labeled it pathological positivity. Now, why the curiosity? Because the word pathological in the world of psychology means disordered, disconnected from reality. Crazy. And it sounds a little crazy to consider what I'm suggesting here. That you can choose a positive position regardless of your circumstances. And I'll come back to that. But the word pathological also means compulsively driven. Like in the phrase... Or a commonly known reference to pathological liars. You've heard that before, right? They can't stop. They do it with a dogged determination to keep doing it. And that's going to be a useful part of this title as well. After nearly twenty years of podcasting, we're making a change, and I'm excited to tell you more about why this name, pathological positivity, is a natural evolution of a mission that I've been driving at through my entire professional career. And so this new chapter brings up a sharper focused with renewed energy and expanded possibilities for where we can go with this. So come back with me to 2007 when we launched the podcast and that's before podcasting was even a thing. I was doing a talk radio program through K Talk radio. That's in the Salt Lake City market. And I was co hosting one day of a five day program. Every week they had this programming for five days. It was part of something called the producer revolution radio series and I was asked to anchor the Thursday edition, which I labeled live on purpose. And this has been the name of my practice and it's been the driver of what I've done for most of my career, live on purpose. And I found out one day on my way to the office, I'm listening to the radio, k talk radio in the car and I hear an announcement on this program that I was hosting and anchoring on on Thursdays. I heard on the radio that the programming had changed and that I did not have a show to do that week on Thursday. This is how I found out. And I got a call later on where they explained to me what the programming changing was, but it hit me hard because I had become so passionate about sharing principles of positive psychology and interviewing fascinating amazing people that it was really deflating to me to hear that I no longer had the show. Well, a friend of mine approached me and said, hey, you should put this up on a podcast. And I'm like, a what? Remember, this is 2006, 2007. It was not something that was very common or well known at that time. So we were one of the early adopters of this podcasting technology and we've been part of the evolution of podcasting almost since its beginning. So this consistent passion that I have felt for bringing powerful psychological principles into everyday conversations where people can actually use them has been in my blood and in my heart for all of these years. And I am so grateful that you have picked up on this along with thousands, tens of thousands of listeners over the years that we have been running the show. Now the name Live on Purpose Radio has served its purpose well and it reflects an important part of our history because the radio is where we started. The new name better represents the specific contribution that we want to make to the conversation about positivity and positive psychology. We live in a world that's overflowing with information and opinions and advice. What we need are meaningful frameworks that help us organize what we're learning and translate that knowledge into meaningful action. I've often said that these principles are really important to get into your heart and into your head, but it really doesn't make a difference until it gets into your shoes. It's got a walk around in your life, and that's where it makes the biggest difference. One of my coaches told me that information is free, but containers are rare. That was the amazing and incomparable Michelle Villalobos who put that idea in my head. And this podcast has provided one of those containers for nearly two decades now. Our established foundation gives us a tremendous opportunity to build something even more meaningful on top of that. You probably noticed I mentioned at the beginning, this is episode 726, and that's a weekly podcast. So go do the math. That's how it stacks up against others that might be, you know, a little less, durable over time. Which brings us back to the name. So pathological positivity. There's a couple of reasons why I love putting those two words together. Most people have some familiarity with the idea of positive thinking. And one of the things that we've heard for decades from gurus on the stage or in in personal development programs is just think positive, look on the bright side, stay optimistic, maintain that cheerful attitude. Right? This can feel very superficial, shallow, trite, fluffy, even annoying sometimes. Positive psychology gives us a much deeper understanding of how our actual thinking influences our experiences on a day to day basis. Genuine positivity, the way I define it in my model, acknowledges reality including all of the challenges, the disappointments, the pain, the difficulties. I think we have to get past the trite fluffy versions of positivity because it's so dismissive of the actual human experience. And having said that, our ability to choose our position... Now the word position and attitude can be used interchangeably because attitude literally means position. That's something that my pilot son has helped me to more fully realize because it's an aviation term. It means the position of the plane relative to the ground or the horizon. It doesn't tell you where you are. It sure as heck tells you where you're going and position creates possibilities for how we can respond to the reality, sometimes the painful difficult realities that show up in our life and in our relationships. Now I need to make a little distinction here from toxic positivity, which is a term that has come up in recent years, which refers back to that very dismissive or minimizing approach that says, well, just paste on a smile and pretend everything's peachy. That's a better explanation for toxic positivity. So we're getting into something much more profound. Positivity is the powerful practice of choosing how we engage with reality. Whatever that reality happens to be. What is my position relative to that? Now, I mentioned earlier that in psychology and in everyday language, pathological often suggests something extreme or abnormal or or deeply entrenched. Now I gave the example also of pathological liar. This is someone whose behavior has become a persistent, almost automatic pattern. We're borrowing that sense of persistence and determination as a provocative metaphor for what we're doing on this podcast. Imagine becoming so committed to choosing a positive position or attitude that it becomes your habitual approach to life. A dogged determination to consistently choose a positive position. Now, this involves intention, consistency, practice, and really a willingness to choose again when more difficult stuff shows up because guess what? We're not done yet. Pathological positivity then is a determination, a dogged determination to choose a positive position regardless of our circumstances. And imagine that becoming so practiced that it's almost your default approach to life. This is going to require some reprogramming, and we can strengthen it through deliberate practice. It probably would make sense at this juncture to just quickly share, and it's not the purpose of this episode to go into it in a lot of detail, but the positivity model that's at the core of everything we do. It's kind of like the operating instructions for the equipment of our mind. I like to say sometimes that my job is to illuminate the obvious, which is really cool. And I think some of my fellow psychologists can relate to this. Illuminating the obvious but unnoticed processes that are going on in our mind all the time. Obvious but unnoticed. Just go there for a minute. The feeling of your clothing. Can you feel it? Well, now you can. Now that I've mentioned it. See, bringing it to your awareness, the obvious now becomes noticed. And our emotional intelligence has to do with how we understand and engage with some of the powerful processes that are going on in our mind all the time. In the positivity model, we focus on two of those, evaluation and creation. These are types of thoughts that we have. I encourage my clients and trainees to engage in a process I call metacognition. And metacognition is one of those fancy psychobabble words. It just means thinking about your thinking. So notice that in your thinking, you're constantly judging or evaluating your circumstances, your relationships, the things that are going on in the world around you, judging, evaluating. And that same powerful mind of yours is constantly engaged in creation of what is to be. And that doesn't exist yet. We haven't created it yet. So notice this, in evaluation, we compare what it is, our circumstances, with something better or something worse. In creation, we imagine what might happen next. Is it going to be better or worse? Now, and I'm simplifying that a little bit on purpose. These mental processes influence our emotional energy and how we experience our life and that in turn determines how we show up and so that creates our results. Learning to recognize and intentionally direct these processes gives us greater influence over our entire life experience. So we start by acknowledging and accepting and making peace with what it is. And from there, we move forward to ask, okay. What could I create next? Your circumstances provide the starting point. Your thinking determines what you do from here moving forward. Alright. That's why I wanted to share a little bit about this new title with you. This is a new chapter. It's a bigger conversation. It's built on years of clinical experience. And so here's what you can expect. There are three elements I want you to watch for as we launch this new season of what used to be called Live on Purpose Radio, now pathological positivity. You can expect real psychology. These are insights drawn from decades of professional experience in psychology. I am going to provide to you accessible explanations of how our minds work, fresh perspectives that challenge conventional assumptions about all of that, and some practical models and strategies and tools that you can apply immediately. Another thing you can expect is remarkable stories. And this has been one of my favorite things about the podcast up until now. Over the last two decades, I've interviewed some amazing, brilliant people. You get to hear engaging conversations with people who have demonstrated extraordinary positivity in the way we talk about it here. Not just the pretending everything's peachy. These people have powerful stories and the guests that I invite here have navigated adversity and difficulty and pain and they've created meaningful change or influenced others in powerful ways as a result. I'll be talking to entrepreneurs, executives, authors, community leaders, people with extraordinary experiences and explore the thinking behind their accomplishments so that you can see how they did this, the principles that we can learn from and benefit from their experiences as a result. And the third thing that you get to experience here, a radically different way to live. We're going to try in every episode to give you practical applications for your relationships. Parenting obviously is one of those areas. Leadership, business, sales, personal development. Because the mind that you're using in all of those activities is engaging in those processes of evaluation and creation. So you get to develop a greater awareness of your own thinking. I think, I believe that this is how we save the planet. This is how we save the world. This is how we solve all of the social problems that we're facing. It starts with the individual choices that we make as humans. And, understanding the processes that our brain is taking us through puts us in a position of power. Awareness precedes choice. We're exploring the psychology of people who have discovered powerful ways to live, lead, and love, and how the rest of us can learn from their experience. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being here, for being part of this engaged audience. And as we enter this new season, I am excited to bring to you conversations and psychology that will help you to more powerfully affect your circumstances and create your results. Recommend people. If you're aware of someone, if you've been listening to the show for a while and you think, hey, you know, Doctor. Paul ought to interview so and so. Please make that introduction. I've had some amazing people introduced to me. And as we've shared their stories, it's improved everyone's experience. So this is a welcoming place for substantive, engaging conversations about positivity in action. One quick word before I let you go here today about Positives. Positives is a new platform that we've built, and it opened just before we're doing this rebrand here for the podcast, and it's a natural extension of exactly what I'm talking to you about here. The podcast provides discovery and insight and inspiration and what I call breakthrough learning. The moments. Hopefully, the lights will go on for you as you hear these powerful stories of positive psychology in action. The positives platform provides a structured opportunity to engage with these principles consistently. We are providing on that platform daily, weekly, and monthly positives, practices, and experiences. So you can go check that out. Just go to positives, that's plural, positives.life. See what we're doing over there? This is providing something that I think has been missing in my career for... And and it's a frustration that other psychologists have too, where we see the lights go on for people and then they go back and do the same darn things that they were doing all along. This new platform has given us an opportunity to affect transformational learning. This is different from breakthrough. Breakthrough is the moment. Transformational learning is more like learning the piano or learning a new language. It requires repeated practice. It's not particularly fun. Now it doesn't have to be miserable. We're making it as fun as we can but the repetitions, the rhythm, the practice has to be there in order to reprogram the neural pathways of your brain. And we're seeing phenomenal results already in the early months of opening this platform. Come see what we're doing. It's positives.life. Breakthrough learning changes what you know. Transformational learning changes who you become. Both the podcast and the positives platform are working in tandem to contribute to that process. I hope you'll join us for this next chapter because we've got some exciting conversations ahead. Thank you, especially those of you who are long time listeners for being part of this Live On Purpose radio journey. And to anyone who's new to the show, welcome. I hope you're going to discover here a place where you can experience an increase in your awareness that will lead you into more power in saving and enriching all of your key relationships. I'm excited about the possibilities that lie ahead. Take a moment to subscribe to the show. Would you also share this episode with someone who would appreciate a deeper understanding of positivity and encourage others to come and join our movement here? I'm also open, as I said earlier, to potential guests. If you want to suggest or recommend someone, I would love to hear from you on that. Let's be part of that ongoing conversation and bring in other voices that can inspire. You know, nearly twenty years ago, I started having conversations about what it means to live on purpose. Those conversations have shaped my professional life, and I'm excited about where they're taking us next. I believe positivity is one of the most powerful strategies and skills available to us as humans. When we understand the psychology behind it and practice it with dogged determination, it can transform how we experience our lives. That's the adventure we're embarking on together. Welcome to pathological positivity. Did you get what you came for? Now do something with it. Subscribe, share what you've learned, and give us a rating. Remember, positivity can become your practice.