#Build Your Character

INSPIRATIONAL QUOTE

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the Malkan Show podcast. I am Meghana Malkan, thank so much for joining me today for this episode of the podcast.

I know your time is valuable and I am really happy that you are listening to me today. I have begun this podcast because after being coached by the world’s best, I wanted to share with you guys what success habits, success tools, and cues have helped me get onto higher levels of performance at work, have great relationships with my spouse and kids and what really helped me stay focused and motivated all the time.

So, guys let's dive into the next episode. Let's talk about controlling our outlook and hence our character in life. Most of the events and experiences that happen to you in your life are very often random, they are unexpected.

You can say coincidental or so many times we feel that they are fated or destined to happen which means they just happen to us and the outside of our anticipation. But the thing is guys your ultimate response which is the meaning you give to these occurences is 100% within your control.

And this is the biggest difference between others and us human beings to give our experience and here lies our greatest tool in living that charged high-performance life. It turns out that the greatest needle mover in our depth of control of our life is our outlook. It’s the quality of meaning we attach to events in our life and hence our future.

Guys if this is true it places you in a very critical role in life because you are serving as a guardian and as a director of our outlook towards not only our self but also towards others and also towards the world at large.

The thing id it is a tougher task as what you see in the world on a regular basis is what you tend to expect. What most people are seeing isn’t all that positive. Almost everything we read today and we see today is more or less an advertisement of some form or another for things like chaos, stress, conflict, for so much negativity. For consumerism and it's so much about other people's agendas.

So to think about this modern media-driven world that seemingly conspires to darken our perspective on humanity. It makes us feel or it makes us feel less in every count.

On average, a person watches  4 hours of television per day, and most of which is about polarization. All about violence, narcissism, and most often greed and worse still we spend another few hours browsing websites which really don’t add anything into our lives but instead, they only add more distraction and dead ends to us.

If we are spending more than 4 hours a day seeing and experiencing such things what shall we begin to expect into the world? What do you think? Are we going to expect positive things or are going to expect negative things?

This realization guy leads to the obvious that if you are going to maintain a sane and positive perspective about the world it is so important to better guard the information you are consuming on a day-to-day basis.

Because in all cases it is not going to hurt you to dramatically decrease your time spending watching television or browsing the internet or going through social media or listening to that trash radio talks or reading celebrity gossip magazines. All that information we are consuming consciously as well as unconsciously is creating that undue stress and unease in our lives.

Unfortunately, we do not understand when we consume it. So despite the popular metaphor that your brain is a computer, I beg to differ, no it's not. Computers don’t have emotions but we do. For every bit of data that comes into your life, your praying is attaching meaning and emotion to it.

This means that information is quite heavy to us and the more information coming into our life the more weight is loading us down. If a computer gets overloaded with too much data it simply slows down its processing speed or worse comes to worst it shuts down. So think about it, too much negative media with all this emotional baggage is doing to you, your brain, and your life.

So the same applies to the so-called energy vampires of our life. You know all those people are constantly berating you with their judgment, their criticism, and their idea about yourself. All this makes you feel terrible about yourself.

So decreasing your exposure to toxic people is just as important as decreasing your exposure to negative media. This is an important one guys think about it. So often most of us are surrounded by negative and toxic people in our lives, which keep criticizing us all the time and weighing us down with their judgment.

So how about, perhaps focusing that same time about 4 hours or so in a day consuming purposefully chosen, educational and empowering book or programs or maybe meeting up with friends who boost our view of life or maybe working through and tackling new challenges that remind how strong and how much change in life we really are.

So in terms of a person's happiness, you can the most important way to safeguard our outlook is to control our interpretations of how positive and personal we view events coming our way into our lives.

This guy is the basis of discussing that optimism and that identity in so much of the psychology studies that we do. Let's start with optimism, let's discuss a bit about it because also let's understand why it's important to start controlling our thoughts so that we become or if you already are, you continue to remain an optimist.

Because if psychologists have proven anything conclusively it is this that its best to interpret the information and any event occurring in your life with an optimistic mindset, viewing what you see, hear and experience as more positive than negative.

So what does being an optimist mean? It’s a very common question I have often encountered. An optimist means that you view things in a good light and remain hopeful and confident that things will turn out well for you. So when bad things happen to you what do you do?

So when such a thing does happen optimism will help you keep things in perspective. That’s why optimists tend to view all negative events in their life as temporary as something specific to a specific situation and something they did not necessarily cause but something they can handle or resolve.

And guys an important note here, despite all the popular misconceptions optimists aren’t just dreamers who don’t see the world as it is. That’s not the fact. The fact is optimists are more likely to see the world as it is and take action to address these problems than pessimists are. This is an important differentiator between the two.

That’s because pessimists don’t believe that the problem can be resolved. Whereas, optimists do and are willing to take more action. So optimists, in general, have found to be happier, live longer, they cope longer in trouble situations. They last longer into beautiful loving marriages, they live healthier lifestyles. Pessimists tend to see negative evils and experiences as things will last longer and will create havoc in their lives, and cannot be controlled or stopped.

This is the pessimistic outlook.

And those who say I am not born an optimist or I am not wired to be an optimist there is of course hope.

Neuroscientists have proved over and over again that neural pathways, we all have neural pathways and research shows that new ones can be formed and old ones can be strengthened by a conscious focus on our attention and deliberate practice.

So without question, all normal functioning human beings can become eternal optimists with focus and with effort. How liberating does that sound? So it's ultimately a matter of choice. So given a choice guys, what do you say? Life of a positive outlook or a negative expectation.

The choice is yours. The other major interpretation we make and we should be controlled to safeguard our outlook is our identity. Because those who think very low of themselves or are real pessimists often feel that all the incoming information is negative they view all this as evidence that they are bad from inside and they are not worthy enough. They link their identity to not being worthy and they feel that they are not enough and that they should have personally prevented problems from arising into their lives.

That’s not an empowering feeling guy because on the other hand those who feel that they are living a charged life, are living a life that is fully under their control they tend to see information as just that which is information. They do not attach any negative emotion or judgment to themselves just because someone says something negative or something negative happens in the outside world.

What they do is they try to protect their self-image and they realize that sometimes chaotic and volatile world need not shake their internal peace and constitution or their perspective about how magical the world can truly be. That is such a liberating thought.

This internal power that we use to safeguard our outlook and direct it towards more positivity. This is the force that allows us to shape our character to determine our character. And one of the most defining choice, guys you will ever make in your entire life is deciding to control the quality of person you will be on an everyday basis. So it's time to ask yourself what will you stand for?

Think about it, what kind of positive values, standards, and belief systems will you demonstrate every single day. How much honesty, integrity, kindness, and fairness will you insist upon when you are meeting the world. These questions guys are the stuff of character and I believe we should be thinking about it and prospecting about these questions every day.

They are important in shaping our outlook and hence our character.

So beginning today guys, set an intention and a focus, a complete relentless focus as living your life as the greatest person you can ever become in any situation. Demand you demonstrate the strength of character in such a way that you find pride in who you are and others will you see as a role model. The fact is guys we cannot control everything in life.

But we can control ourselves, who are we being, how are we treating others, what purpose is driving us. So controlling the quality of our character in a day by day, interaction by interaction, situation by situation kind of way is what forms the quality of the life that we live. This is the stuff legacy is made up of.

One important lesson we learn from all the successful people and high performers that have ever walked into the planet is that character is not just who we think we are and what we stand for but it is what we demonstrate to the world, Because guys intentions are not enough, Our actions define who we truly are. Because this way nothing changes in your life until you change your behavior.

Demanding and showing more of your magnificent character. Challenge yourself on a continual basis with this question, do my actions reflect the quality of a person 

I want to be and I can be.

And you will be on the way to building your character the way you want to be and I wish you all the best.

May 26th, 2020   #The Malkan Show