Hey it’s Tim Brown and this is Extra Mile: Positive Thinking During COVID-19, and I’m doing this every day during lockdown so I can get good at helping people maintain a positive mindset. 

I mentioned yesterday that my trip to the Appalachians helped me trust myself – climbing a giant mountain on that trip also slammed home a very important point in my mind. 

Climbing up hour after hour, I kept on coming to what I thought was the top. However, I would get up to that top and see through the mist that there was an even higher peak above. I had to stop assuming the top I was seeing was the real top. 

#1) I had to beware of false summits. They were extremely demotivating. I had to learn that even though the next leg of the journey would be difficult and I still had a long way to go – I had to try to think about what was interesting about the current leg. 

#2) I see people all the time that “think they’ve made it” and no offense… even though many of them are farther than me… I don’t want to get stuck there. If you’re successful, but you’re not nice to your employees for instance, is that really success? Or is there a lot more journey that you could go… I believe we all have further to go in our personal journey and that’s exciting and motivating. 

#3) Stephan Bajaio recently told me an anecdote he’d heard - 2 climbers, same training, same build, same everything. 1 made it – the other didn’t. Why?  1 every time they came to a stopping point, one would only look up at the summit, and the other would glance back at how far they’d come every once in a while. So the difference between the successful and unsuccessful is “Wow” mindset, and the “Ow” mindset.

So for your bit of positivity today – can you look how far you’ve come in the past year, past 5 years, past 10 years? How much you’ve grown and learned? How much you’ve progressed. 

And then keep going – cause you’re not done yet. Quicklink to subscribe on Spotify “hookagency.com/extra” - this is Tim Brown, join me every weekday after my mile run for a couple minutes of positivity.