Probably one of the corniest but wisest exercises I’ve ever engaged in was something that Tony Robbins called the “Seven Day Mental Diet.” Essentially, it went like this: every time you have a negative thought, you have to push it out of your mind immediately. If, during the seven days, you find yourself perseverating or spinning out on a negative thought, you have to stop the exercise and start over again the next day. It only really works if you can successfully make it through the seven days as directed.
Now, if memory serves, I completed this diet sometime around 2014 and it’s still working. Perhaps a little too well. The other day in therapy I was talking about working fifty hours a week instead of forty and I immediately explained that “at least I’m making really good money.” That’s when my therapist said, “Can we just focus on the first part of that statement? I know that you are rapidly defaulting to the positive (and I tend to do that, too) but I want you to sit with the negative for a few minutes.”
But I can’t. That “diet” is an effective way to reprogram, not simply how you think, but how you move through life and relate to others. Now, I am aware of the fact that there are other people who are able to accomplish this same feat with spirituality, yoga, religion, and meditation. It’s not terribly important what you use to not soak in negative thoughts–so long as you just don’t.
I saw someone on Twitter (X) recently and my heart really went out to him. First of all, his Twitter handle was something like “Rob is querying.” Secondly, he seems to post every moment of his arduous journey online with tweets like “Having a nervous breakdown. An agent told me that my writing was too repetitive. I think it’s just time for me to stop trying. I just need to take a break from this whole writing thing. I am losing hope.”
I get it. The process of querying agents is something you have to just buckle in for. I’m sure a lot of you who were on the journey with me when I was trying to get, what became known as “Kickass Recovery” published. I received so many rejections that I took a day off from work and went to a powerful hypnotist to get the negativity out of my head.
This might lead you to ask “How is it that you were in danger of becoming negative? I thought you just said you programmed yourself out of that.” Well, think of it in terms of having a nice, expensive laptop in top functioning order. If you lend that machine to someone else and they spend the entire day accessing porn sites, your beautiful laptop is going to be attacked by viruses and pop-ups and who knows what else.
In other words, I may have been programmed well, but one rejection after another after another will nearly ruin your code.It’s doing what you did in those days but in reverse. Hence, my trip to the hypnotist. I asked him to take all of the negativity off me. Kind of like a lobotomy. If that sounds too harsh, then we’ll just say “reprogramming” or “restoring” all the work I did on myself in 2014.
The day that I drove to Woodstock, I was in the middle of a few back and forths with an agent. But I had battle fatigue. I had already experienced one agent stringing me along for weeks before I had to pry it out of her that she would not be offering me representation. She seemed to want to find out if anyone would be interested in my book at a publishing conference and I assume was told by many of the major houses that they weren’t. The questions they probably asked were, “How big of a following does he have?” “Is he an actor or a well-known musician? If not, why would anyone read the book?”
It’s a sad fact, but most people are only interested in the horror stories of famous people. I learned that when I tried desperately to get on the podcast “Dopey” and was utterly ignored. This guy only interviews influencers, washed-up actors, comedians, and rock stars.
I digress (but you’re used to this by now, aren’t you?)
The larger point is that a naive person would not have had to take a day off to see a hypnotist because they’d realize that they were right on the precipice of finally signing a deal. I was so jaded at that point that I assumed this agent I was talking to was surely going to do the same thing.
Well, as I left the office in Woodstock, that agent emailed me and asked me for another sample chapter. I sent it. Then, when I arrived home, she asked if I could possibly build up my following. I said what anyone would say. “I will try my best.” Then she asked if I could get a celebrity to write my Foreword. Again, I said, “I’ll try my best.”
And even when this agent had me sign my deal, I still didn’t trust it. She said she wanted to link me up with her friend who helps people “build their online following.” After I was given a quote by this friend (thousands of dollars I wasn’t going to spend) I thought for sure that I was being scammed. “Sign the guy, take him for thousands and then conveniently tell him no one was interested. I went through something like this in the nineties with a so-called entertainment attorney.
I don’t have to tell you how this story ends except to say that here we are five years later and I am meeting my lovely agent at Gallagher’s Steakhouse on Monday for lunch. So, does defaulting to the positive have a legitimate purpose?
I believe the answer is in these lines of text. For me, I just can’t see any other way to move through life.
Hmm, an interesting technique to leave out the negative brain buzz. Regarding readership, my numbers have dripped so low on Elephant, that 32 people reading my Substack feels like thousands. Ugh. I feel like quitting at times, and just writing to write. Thanks Billy. Maybe I need to try the negative removing diet.
I’m reading this on holidays while the babies sleep and laughing and crying. This hits home. I had a similar experience with the Mel Robbins 5 second rule it kind of spun out of control. Today I read a bad review on one of my stories on a meditation app. When you work so hard at thought challenging it seeps into your core yet those negative feedback reviews are deadly. As always I felt better and brighter after this read.