Mastering the Art of Positive Storytelling

The Goodnet Effect: Echoes of Inspiration, is a podcast brought to you by Goodnet, a part of the Arison Group. Goodnet is an online good news magazine founded by businesswoman and philanthropist Shari Arison, filled with inspirational and uplifting content. Our podcast dives into stories that inspire change and highlight the incredible efforts of people making a difference.Together we will embark on a transformative journey of positivity, kindness and inspiration. Special thanks to the Arison Group’s Essence of Life Radio for hosting our podcast. 

This episode of the Goodnet Effect: Echoes of Inspiration explores the art of positive storytelling and how reframing your beliefs can transform your life. Discover how you can become the author of your life’s story, impacting your daily experiences and well-being. We’ll share practical tips and end with a guided meditation to help you master positive storytelling.

Scroll down for a transcription of this episode.

What would you say if I told you that I knew about a magic power that would radically transform the way that you view yourself and the world and learn to see things and frame things in a more positive way?

Isn’t it time that you learned to speak to yourself and about yourself in a kind, nurturing, loving way, instead of being your own worst critic and your own worst enemy? Welcome to the Goodnet Effect: Echoes of inspiration. We’re so excited to have you here with us today.

We’re going to go take a deep dive into the art of positive storytelling or positive reframing. We’ll learn some practical tools on how to implement this into your life, so that as soon as the podcast is over, you can push pause and you can immediately start learning to use some of these things in a practical way. And finally, we’ll end with a short guided meditation to help this sit in a more subconscious and safe place inside of yourselves.

But I promised you magic, and so magic you’ll get. What if there was a magic phrase or a magic concept that you could use to pick yourself up when you’re feeling down? Instead of being drawn into the negativity, you could be drawn towards positivity.So that magic comes from within yourself and from inside of yourself. So we all know the phrase abracadabra. It’s magic. It’s magic. At its most basic. Abracadabra is actually rooted in an ancient aramaic phrase. And the words abra means I will create, and dabra means as I speak. So abracadabra, when you’re using your magic wand and wanting to do magic in the world, basically you’re saying, I will create as I speak my words, what I say, have power. Have the power to create a reality. 

And the first place that those words have that power, the most fundamental place that those words have power is within yourself and how you speak to yourself, that inner voice inside your head. It can either be your worst critic or if you learn to use the magic, and if you learn to use abracadabra, and you can even use it as a little tiny device, if you feel yourself slipping towards the negativity, just say abracadabra. Abracadabra. I am going to magic myself. I am going to control my words, I’m going to control my inner voice, and I’m going to hear that inner critic before I let it take control over me. And so, abracadabra, we have the power. Our words create our reality. Through my words, I build a reality.

It’s almost like putting a filter. You know, we all use our cell phones to take pictures, and we all want those pictures to look as good as possible. After the picture is taken, I can put whatever filter I want over that photograph.I can make it  look nostalgic.I can make it look optimistic.I can make it look like morning.I can make it look a little bit black and white.We can put a filter on our thoughts and on our words.And when we’re able to, first of all, even stop before we allow the negativity to take over.And if we have the awareness that we have that power, that’s already way ahead of the game, that’s already using the magic and tapping into the magic. You have  to speak about yourself positively. You have to realize that you are the author of your story, and you can write it any which way you want. You decide on the tone and the tone. If you make the choice to pick up that positive pen, you can write a really beautiful life story about yourself and how you present yourself to others in the world. 

So I’ll tell you a story because we’re talking about positive storytelling. I’ll tell you a story. My daughter, when she was in high school, was selected to be part of a leadership program. And she was part of a leadership program, and she traveled to South Africa on a youth delegation. And we planned and prepared for this trip. And she was all ready, and she knew everything. And everything was packed. And the day of the trip, for some reason, one of the messages got missed, and we were late for the flight. Both of us were late for the flight. I as the mother, she as the daughter, a huge moment of overwhelm, panic, anxiety, nervousness. And went quickly into my room to get ready to get dressed. And my daughter starts pounding on the door, banging on the door, mom, mom. And I said, honey, I can’t answer the door. I need to get dressed because we need to go to the airport so we don’t miss your flight. She said, no, no, no, mom, this is really, really important. I need to tell you something. I said, not now. She said, please,  please, please. Knocking on the door. Mom, I need to tell you something. So I opened the door. I’m half dressed. Take my deep, calming mom breath, and I say, okay, what is it, honey? What do you need to tell me? And she said the following.

She said, start where you are, use what you have. Do what you can. I said, whoa. Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can. Wow. And with that short phrase, she was able to calm me down. I was able to calm her down. We were both able to function. Obviously, we made the flight. I have since drawn on that phrase in many different places and times in my life. And that’s not the only phrase.

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the idea of positive affirmations. They sound very big, and really, they’re very simple. It’s using a phrase like this, or you can simplify it and water it down. You can make it any phrase that resonates with you. I am a capable, calm, wonderful, positive human being. I am worthy of love. Anything that is in your mind. That inner critic voice, once you’ve learned to identify it, and believe me, our inner critic is really, really adept and capable at doing their job. And we know our own weaknesses better than anybody else. But once you hear and have identified that inner critic and hear the negativity that they’re throwing at you, when you flip it around and you flip it into a positive aspiration, you’re silencing that critic. 

And so you have that power. You have that ability. It’s as simple as using your magic wand and abracadabra ing the negativity into positivity. When you have the ability, when you’re able to do that, you can transcend almost any situation and you can find yourself in the direction, and it certainly is not something that’s going to happen in a minute. Once you’ve taken this on and this becomes your way of living, you can go in the direction of valuing yourself, seeing what your self worth is, and ultimately self love, because everything stems from that. 

I’d like to give you some very, very practical tools so that these things can be implemented into your life almost immediately. And so in order to learn how to speak positively about and to yourself, one of the most important tools to use is mindfulness.Mindfulness is just the simple act of learning how to be in the moment, being mindful of the moment that I’m in, wherever I am. I’m paying attention to the quality of the air, to the light, to the sky, to the flowers, to the color of the shirts of the people that are around me. And what does this do for me? This silences all of the voices in my mind that might be pulling me in a negative way. And so it silences the anxieties and fears about what might potentially happen in the future, and it silences the regrets and the sadness of what might have happened in the past. And it brings me right to this present moment. And mindfulness and being in the present moment are your best friends in terms of learning how to tell a positive story. 

So the first tool is mindfulness. After you’ve mastered mindfulness, and we actually have on our site a whole array of articles on mindfulness. You can get online on Goodnet.org Just put in a quick search on mindfulness. We can put some links into our bio for you. And we have mindfulness in almost all settings.

We have guided meditations to help you sleep. We have mindfulness while you’re at work.Mindfulness for parents tips, practical tips how to start if it feels strange for you. So get onto goodnet and use some of those amazing resources that we have there for you. 

But after mindfulness, the next step would be to learn how to be a neutral observer in your own life. And if you’ve ever done any journaling, absolute straight observation as if you’re a reporter and someone’s giving you the beat, is you writing about covering your own life and you’re not making any judgments on anything that you do. And this is really, really challenging to master, but literally just observing the same way that we were mindful in the moment, we’re mindful about our own selves.

So it’s mindful, neutral observation and journaling. Being a reporter about your own life, and after you’ve done that for a while and you go through what you’ve recorded, you start to identify the challenges. You start to be able to identify the difficult things that you have to overcome, the behavior patterns that perhaps are holding you back, that you’d like to change, but you’re able to do it with a lot more empathy and a lot more kindness. Because the judging is gone, because the critic has been silenced, because the critic has no place in mindfulness. The critic can’t live in the present moment. He’s quiet, he/she is not powerful anymore.

So you’ve silenced that critic.And when you can go through your journaling, your neutral journaling, and you start to see patterns and you start to identify areas that might be things that you want to change about yourself, then you can learn to focus on your strengths, to focus on what there is and start slowly working towards change. Now, I want to mention change just for a minute. And that is, if anybody’s tried to make a change in any area of their lives, whether it’s speaking positively or taking on a new habit, negativity and inner critic are the first things that are going to derail that attempt at change. The only way that you can move forward and change is if you believe that you’re going to succeed in change, if you believe that you even have a chance to change. So if you’ve already shot yourself in the foot before you head out the door, before you’re at the starting line, there’s no chance. So the only way that I have, that I have, if I’m gentle with myself, if I’m empathetic with myself, if I’m compassionate with myself, if I’m loving to myself the way that I am with my friends, the way that I am with my children, if I start to learn how to be that way with myself, then change becomes not so scary and change becomes possible. 

And so one of the final tools in terms of practical tools for learning how to be a positive storyteller is to use the affirmations that we mentioned earlier. So Goodnet has collected a lot of affirmations. We have affirmations for adults, for teens, different times when affirmations can be used. So again, get on our site and put in a search for affirmations. We have affirmations that we actually created for children that have become super popular. We created them during the COVID period when people were unfortunately not able to interact as much. And the isolation and the loneliness was really, really, really difficult, you know, really, really becoming problematic, especially for children. So we created these affirmation pages, which basically take just a positive statement, I am good enough as I am. I can do something happy today. Simple things that children can relate to. And these are affirmation pages, our coloring pages. And you can download them if you’d like to do so for yourself, your inner child, or for any child that you know in your life. The act of coloring actually really does calm as well.

So those are some tools. They’re practical, they’re easy to implement. 

And my final one, it’s just a gift from me to you, is to take one last tool, and that is humor. Not to take ourselves so seriously, to learn to take ourselves lightly is the kindest thing that you can really do for yourself in terms of positivity, the heaviness and the being pulled down into what. What we see as our destiny, to be stuck, to be fated to be the way that we are, when really we have the ability to switch, switch the script, flip that switch, and learn how to use words that can uplift, inspire, and help us grow.

Thank you so much for joining us today. I hope that some of this has resonated with you and that these will be things that you’ll be able to implement slowly and in a positive way into your own lives.

Please join us on goodnet.org to read more positive content, visit us on our social media channels, on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. And I’d like to end with a short, guided meditation that we can do together so that these concepts will sit with us in a more safe, fundamental way. Thank you.