Podcast 524: The Power of Positivity with Deborah Mallow

MARTIN: Okay, this is Martin Pytela. Welcome to the Life Enthusiast podcast. You find me at life-enthusiast.com. And today with me, Deborah Mallow. And I'm excited to introduce Deborah Mallow to you. Welcome.

DEBORAH: Oh, Martin, thank you. You are fascinating. And just listening to a little bit about your life, I am so excited to actually chat with you. Actually, I'd rather talk about you, but we'll talk about both.

MARTIN: Well, let's do it this way. Let's talk about you so that my audience gets to meet you. We can do another show later. I'm looking forward to that.

DEBORAH: Yay.

MARTIN: And what's important to me is to to share someone who I I think I know your life story. I think I know your way of thinking. I understand it. Been there, done that. And we had to overcome our own selves to allow greatness to flow in because we usually we all of us are our worst enemies.

DEBORAH: Oh yes.

MARTIN: Right.

DEBORAH: Absolutely. Our negative thoughts, which aren't even real, the worry that 91% of the time never happens. All the studies just show so many things that we do to ourselves. that we don't need to do. We need to get out of our own way. And you've managed to do that. And I'm I've managed to do it. And I I'm still working on it every day.

MARTIN: Oh, clearly. Well, of course, it's a work in progress. And you know what pisses me off the most?

DEBORAH: Tell me.

MARTIN: By the time we got it together, it's time to check out.

DEBORAH: No, you're going to live a long life.

MARTIN: I  watched my mom by the time she was perfect. She said, "Okay, I've done it. I'm out."

DEBORAH: Okay. I think you're going to live a long life. You take good care of yourself and you have some secrets all the metabolic stuff, where, there's something to it.

MARTIN: Yeah. Okay. That that okay let's just mention that that it's totally relevant that how we eat and how we combine our foods will affect our moods and there's this autonomic nervous system that gets triggered either either into the fight or flight or the rest and repair

and the rest and repair makes you nice, pleasant, easy to get along with but procrastinate and putting things off and lazy and tomorrow's okay. Whereas the acidity gets you doing stuff, getting stuff done, but you get to be a bit abrasive at it. And most importantly, you get to be unkind to yourself.

DEBORAH: Yes. As I say, rude to ourselves, not personally considerate.

MARTIN: Yeah. Which is, yeah. You can turn it inward or outward. You can be angry at the world and at the same time abuse yourself, too.

DEBORAH: Yes. Yes.

MARTIN: Mhm.

MARTIN: And that's what I loved about your book. It's right there over your shoulder. The sixst step. Six steps to fewer days that suck. I think that's yeah, it's beautiful. No fluffy. You live your life on the cloud9 successful and achieving. No, let's just go for the just let's get less of the stuck.

DEBORAH: Yeah. Really. Honestly, that's really how I came to the name because

you can't be happy every minute of every day. We have to be honest, but we can learn to tame our stressors and just stop the circular thinking and the fear and the worry and all the negative thoughts that really get in the way of living an enjoyable life and just having fun and finally figuring that out. And giving yourself permission to enjoy and not to punish yourself. Give yourself a hug instead makes life so much easier. Not perfect. There's no such thing. But as you read, I've renamed the word failure. I don't like that word. I don't like words with negative connotations. I call it education and growth because how can we change and learn if we don't make mistakes? So we can't punish ourselves for that.

MARTIN: This is such a classic, this is how do we get to wisdom? Well, wisdom is built on learning from errors.

DEBORAH: Yes.

MARTIN: Well, how do we make errors? Well, by trying stuff out. So, the only way to wisdom is to just try it. Sometimes it hurts.

DEBORAH: many many times. But having perspective and that's the wonderful thing about getting older too, you have that perspective and usually things do work out. They might not be perfect and yes, we face sad moments and sometimes horrific times, but it's, and said this on one of the podcasts I listened to, i's how we react. And learning to react in a more positive way. Look, when we're sad and all that, still there's silver linings and things we're going to learn and we have to accept that. people die, and things happen and they might not be pleasant but we need to react to be kind to ourselves, personally considerate to ourselves

MARTIN: As I was going through your book, it's got chapters to it, right? And you just, there are six of them and you need to, or we all, if we want to master our lives we need to actually master those things. But the thing that that struck me the strongest the most important was the agency. The fact that one needs to decide that we're either a victim or um at the I don't know the winds of fate will blow me where they want to.

DEBORAH: Yes.

MARTIN: As opposed to No, no, I'm a sailor. I'm in a boat. I have the rudder. I have the control over it. Yes, it's windy out there. It'll blow at me, but I am in charge of where we're going.

DEBORAH: Absolutely. And we all are, we can't control, we can control ourselves, 

right? We can't control what other people do. Yeah. We can shape our future. Can we control it all the way? No. But we can shape it and we can make decisions to enjoy it more and find ways to do things thatbest suit us also. As I said, a square peg doesn't fit into a round hole. So, we have to choose things that actually fit for us. And that's so important to figure that out. People who figure that out are much happier inside.

MARTIN: Yeah. Figure out that not all holes are your holes.

DEBORAH: Exactly. Exactly, Martin. We have to do that. And it does take perspective and it does take challenges and overcoming them, and just being kind to yourself and somehow enjoying the journey. You know, it takes so many years. Like Malcolm Gladwell said, how many years to to master something? And he gave all the years and he explained it through different people like the Beatles and all that in one of his books and the truth of the matter is, whether it's the years the number of years he said or not, still, we have to we're learning to master what we do and our thoughts and how we react to other people we're kind to other people I always say that you can tell people that are kind to themselves because they're kind to other people. People that are rude it has to do with self-esteem, and they're not kind to themselves. Honestly, it's a flaw in themselves that they don't they're not willing to fix.

MARTIN: Well, this one you just hit on is a phys physiological issue. If you're acidic, you're crabby by design and you need to fix yourself using your nutrition. And when you fix that, your flexibility returns.There are so many people who are are just crabby because they are physiologically in the state. So anyway, that's the value that I can offer because I can teach you how to fix your crabiness by eating differently. But there is, well, the book that you write, I really like it because it's structured, right? If I do all the six chapters, I'm going to arrive at a life so much better equipped. I'm thinking It it can be good at any age, but especially at a younger age. If only you can get it earlier in life, you'll do so much better when you have an understanding from a wise coach like yourself.

 DEBORAH: Or you.

 MARTIN: Because you've earned it hard, right?

DEBORAH: It's true. And I had said, it's interesting, in my introduction, which is very brief, and you've read that is that my overarching goal for this is to pay it forward. And I want to figure out a way I’'m I'm writing the curriculum. Help me! Let's do it together. I want to help children and teens develop self-esteem and learn to become kinder adults. Well, kinder at a younger age so that they can be kinder adults and be successful not just monetarily, because that isn't really always success, but to be successful for themselves, personally because I think that's a greater thing to actually strive for to be personally considerate, as I've said, but also to value yourself. Self-care isn't all about taking bubble baths and all that. It's about valuing yourself
And yeah, becoming resilient and being able to ward off all the negative, to let go of the toxic, even toxic people in your life. I say it's really important to let go of that. And yes, sometimes at work we're faced with it, and we can't get rid of it, but we can limit how many interactions if we really want to. And I did that. I did that in a job because these people around me were very toxic. I was lucky I was in a job as a sales rep, so I was able to. I love the people I called on, but it was sometimes the people that I worked with, they had their own issues. It's insecurity. Always seems to come back to insecurity.

MARTIN: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay, multiple points. Okay. So, if I were trying to teach young people, first thing I would have to clue into is that most people are at least twice more attracted to not losing something they already have compared to something that they might gain.

DEBORAH: Yes.

MARTIN: Right? And so, the fear of loss is way more intense in most people's brains. than than the desire for something better.

DEBORAH: Yeah, that's that comfort zone thing, right, that everybody talks about. You stay sort of stay stuck in what you have because it's fear of the unknown.

MARTIN: I really like Tony Robbins as a wonderful example of a teacher. And one of the tools he uses, I remember he called it ‘The Dickens method.’ It's made in the image of the Christmas story, the spirit of Christmas past and Christmas present, and Christmas future visits upon Mr. Eleazar. And it's, if you try to project yourself into your future, five years and 10 years, if you keep doing the things as you're doing them, the way you've always done them, Where will that get you? What will your life be like in 5 or 10 or 15 or whatever? The younger you are, the further forward you can think it. And if that does not convince you that the change is required, then I don't know what will.

DEBORAH: It's very true. And so many people I see living in New York City, I see so many people are so stressed out, overwhelmed. They're stuck in their lives and they're on a hamster wheel. They can't seem to get off. They can't seem to stop it. It's family. It's work. It's so many things all bombarded, and they don't slow down and value themselves in order to just stop all the circular stuff that's going around them so that they can't seem to stop and change.

MARTIN: Well, New York seems to be very competitive. It's just like hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle some more. The only answer to your lack of success is that you're not hustling hard, which surprisingly is not the whole answer.

DEBORAH: Right.

MARTIN: Yes, you need to do the work, but you need to be in an emotional state that allows you to be creative and allows you to be generative. I would say this, tell me if I'm wrong about that. The vibration of gratitude is probably the best way of getting somewhere. Meaning this, dear God, thank you for bringing into my life this a****** who brought me such an important lesson about not being like him.

DEBORAH: I agree 100% that gratitude, the appreciation It makes such a difference. It helps the positivity actually blossom, right? It just does. Doing kind things, and just, I keep going back to valuing ourselves because we all are, we all have our own gifts. We shouldn't tap into jealousy. We should tap into curiosity and be able to move forward. There's so many positives out there that if we stop being stuck in the negative and the burnout and the circular thinking and all those things, we really will have a much more enjoyable life. But it's a decision like you said, like I say, and it just is. But we can do it. That's the great thing. You, the human beings, we can change. We can change our negative thinking.

MARTIN: Yeah.

DEBORAH: The negativity bias.

MARTIN: I deal with a lot of people who are unwell. Really unwell. Chronically fatigued, unwell with so little energy that it's almost frightful, right? And so they tell me, "Well, it's easy for you to say." The answer is, "Well, I didn't have it easy."

DEBORAH: No, the Mercury when you, I mean, oh my goodness, what you went through, Martin. Well, really, nobody should say to you.

MARTIN: Right. But I mean, well, it's always like that though. It's easy for you to say, "Look at you. You are so together."

DEBORAH: Yes.

MARTIN: Well, I want to say to whoever is listening to it who is at the bottom or just feeling really sorry for themselves and really wanting to have somebody validate them in their misery. It's, yeah, it feels okay. It feels better when somebody says “There there, not your fault.” I'm not blaming you for being in the bottom of a hole, but I promise you that it's totally up to you, only you, to make a decision to get out of it.

DEBORAH: That's right. It so true. And it's so doable. The thing is, if we really open our minds, we really can. And I mean, obviously, both of us are testament to that and being able to do that. Is it easy? It isn't easy. But it feels, once you get there, it feels so much better. So why keep banging your head and staying in the same place being miserable or just sort of getting through the day and just going through the motions, right?

MARTIN: Yeah. And it really is one step at a time, one day at a time, you can change a direction. What's really interesting, my observation is that when you're driving a car, it doesn't take a lot to adjust the steering wheel level. You only change it this much. And it doesn't take too long before you're off the road in the ditch.

DEBORAH: And that is true. It's all about reaction.

MARTIN: Right. It's not a great movement to either correct it or just let it crash.

DEBORAH:That's actually a wonderful analogy because if you actually think, because I find and I use them in my book too is visuals. When you can see something like that, what you just said in your mind, when you understand the science behind things, too, it helps to be able to make that change. And that's why talking about things like you talk about is so important, the food, everything. I just touch upon it in my book because mine is just to say certain things, quick snippets, tell a little story, and this and that to relate to make it relatable, and then people can go and actually research it because it's fascinating, because we can change exactly what you said about the car analogy. We can correct.

MARTIN: Yeah. What I liked about your book was that it actually gives exercises. It gives specific instructions. It's not just some theory. It is actually a how-to manual. So once a person gets their hands on it, if they follow it all the way to the end, don't fall off after step three. four and five are also really useful. But anyway, going through the steps, I don't know how to put it other than you can build a life that's worth living as opposed to enduring.

DEBORAH: Exactly, and going through the motions because, as you saw, I wrote it I did not write it as a chapter book. I wrote it in double pages because our attention span, and we could talk about this too, are getting less and less due to social media. I mean, it's been proven. So I try to do more instant gratification things that that can you could do quickly. Listen, there's no miracle to anything. You have to do the work. But being able to have some visuals, being able to have some stories, some questions to ask yourself, a couple of solutions, a couple of tips, and then line pages at the end of each step to write ‘aha’ moments to revisit. And it's all in like one 123 pages, really. So, it's not like it's a lot to take in. It's simple because I didn't want to go on and on because I originally did this, as you know, for myself. I didn't expect it to get out into the world, but people that read my guide book that I was struggling through when I was working as a sales rep and trying to make changes so I would be happier eventually led to this. And all I want to do is help people have happier days, not perfect days, but just a little bit happier. And I'm so glad to talk to you about this because you get it. And I hope your audience enjoys their life more today if they're not enjoying it now.

MARTIN: Well, this is the point, right? We all find ourselves at a place that's less than perfect. It's life. And the perfection, well, maybe I'm using the wrong language. We find ourselves at a place where we are not enjoying life to its fullest.

DEBORAH: Yes.

MARTIN: And in order to do that, we need to get a map, get a guidebook, figure out how how to do it. You can do it by trying to feel your way through it, but it's so much easier when you meet somebody who's actually got the intellectual capacity to help you structure the whole situation. And show you how it's done. And there it is. Six steps. You will have fewer days that suck. I promise when you follow.

DEBORAH: And you have to listen to Martin, too. I want to take your classes. I am so excited about what you offer. I really I really, really am. And I didn't know about you untill we connected and did this podcast. And I believe the universe aligns in the way it should, and things come to you when you really need them. And I just think this connection is coming to me now when it when I'm open to being able to actually use and be successful with what you offer. All of us need to seek out people who can actually be a mentor, a support system, a community. We all need that positive energy, looking for the right type of people to complement, not distract.

MARTIN: Right on. Yeah. I call coaches the people with a flashlight.

DEBORAH: Mhm.

MARTIN: You're one of those, right? You have, how do I best say that? When somebody comes across this material, they'll realize that they could have done it all themselves. They didn't really need your book for nothing. But having it in their hands, it's like getting a flashlight so you can walk through the dark and not fall into the ditch and not fall into the creek and whatever else. It's a guideline. It's a guide book. It's a leg up for the situation we find ourselves.

DEBORAH: It's so true, and the same for what you offer too. It's really important to look for things, be willing to even spend on yourself to actually advance because let's face it, if we don't take care of ourselves, buying another piece of clothing, yes, it makes you feel good. And I always say do that. Do things that make you happy. Don't overspend. Be physically responsible because by not doing that, you add more stress to your life, but also being able to spend money on things that are going to help you grow. Learning and growing is that, as you said, that step up to rising and becoming a better you. And I know that's said over and over again and it becomes trite, but it's really true. Why shouldn't we be the best version of ourselves and live a life that suits us? Some that we want to enjoy with people, our community, people that we love. Because when we're unhappy, it reflects on everybody else and no one's happy.

MARTIN: Yeah, that's a big one. I remember deciding that I'm not going to be around some people, a specific person, because of negativity.

DEBORAH: Yes.

MARTIN: It was I just don't want to hear that again ever. No, not that. Well, so if you find yourself, the dear listener, if you find yourself being full of piss and vinegar, there's a way out. Some part of that is nutritional changes, and the other part is get a guide book and the six steps to days that will suck less. I think it's different.

DEBORAH: “Six Steps To Fewer Days That Suck.” But it’s okay. It's whatever it is. What you said is really what it is. We wan, how you said it, it's true.

MARTIN: Well, yeah. Based on wisdom earned the hard way, Deborah presents to you the nuggets that she learned and structured it so well. I don't know. I loved it. I wish I had read it when I was 18, maybe 16, and I definitely should have reread it when I was 25, and then I should have reread it again when I was 35 and on and on. I tell you, there's a lot in here that's a reminder.

DEBORAH: Thank you. It's a reminder. And it's all, should have, could have, would have because honestly, hindsight's 2020 and we have to start at the present and move forward. Yes, when was the best time to plant a tree? 20 years ago or however the saying goes, but honestly, we have to do it today. And so, I just think things come to us when we really need them. Sometimes at our deepest, saddest moments, there's an epiphany. And mine was on a New York City subway platform watching the rat run by. And I just said, "You know what? I got to have change." And everybody can do it. Even like you said, if you're filled with piss and vinegar and you're angry at the world, it doesn't have to be that way. And you're going to be so much happier when it's not that way. So, you got to start today at the present and change your thinking. Trade that negative thought for a positive one. You say you can't do it. Yeah, you can do it. We did it. Many people do it. People we coach do it. They do it because it feels miserable to keep banging your head. Why? Not necessary.

MARTIN: All right. Yep. Exactly. So, you can find Deborah at thedailydecisions.com.

DEBORAH: That's right.

MARTIN: The daily decisions. Listen, it's such an interesting clever way of knowing that today is the beginning of the rest of your life, and so the daily decisions are shaping the rest of your life.

DEBORAH: So true.

MARTIN: It's a beautiful reminder. You can find the book there and you can connect with Deborah and get yourself a coach that will make your life better.

DEBORAH: And laugh and smile because you and I know smiling and laughing it triggers those endorphins. And when you do that, you feel so much better. Everybody now just physically smile. You just instantly feel better. There's science behind that. And did you know, I know you know, Martin, that smiling actually makes you more attractive and likable. Think about it. When you have a frown on your face, you don't look so beautiful. But when you smile, it radiates. It comes from your heart and it radiates outward. And it's so important to do these little things that make a big difference in how you feel and the science behind it. It really makes a difference and they should go to your website because you have so much to offer. Oh my goodness, I am so!

MARTIN: They are on my website listening to this. This is life-enthusiast.com. My name is Martin Pytela. And I want you to make sure you visit thedailydecisions.com. I did say it right.

DEBORAH: You did. Decisions with an S. And if you go to forward the daily decisions with an https://thedailydecisions.com/inspire you can get my positive energy club. It's complimentary or free, and you can download worksheets, motivational, happiness, and feel-good activities. They can be standalone or perfect companions to Six Steps to fewer days that suck, but they're there for you, and they're helpful. They really are.

MARTIN: Promise they are. All right, guys. Never mind. You don't have to feel bad to feel better. Just take a good look. And thank you, Deborah, for taking the time to introduce it. And most of all, thank you for having done the work.

DEBORAH: Thank you, Martin, and thank you for being you and sharing everything you do from you have to well, I'm sure everybody here listening knows your story, but it's fascinating how you went from computer science and your masters in business and then had a problem happen to you that mercury poisoning because of how your genetics are and you didn't just take it, you did something about it. And that's all we're talking about. Just doing something about things that make your life less than wonderful because you can. And you're proof of it. I'm proof of it.

MARTIN: Thank you.

DEBORAH: Thank you.

MARTIN: Thank you for being here. This is life-enthusiast.com. My name is Martin Pytela. Thank you again.