Hospitals feel like death.
They’re depressing. Now imagine if you’re a sick child in hospital. Other kids are outside playing. You’re stuck inside feeling sick.
A Californian doctor named Dr. Tony Adkins noticed the same reality. His job was to treat some of the sickest kids who had cancer, brain tumors, and disabilities. Some of them would spend years being sick.
The tension in the hospital ward pissed him off.
Even if the medicine he gave the children worked, the energy still felt off. One morning, while doing his hospital rounds, he decided to make a small change.
He bought a speaker in, played music, and danced to the beat like a child. The first time he got some tiny smiles from kids. After a few days some children laughed. Within a week the whole hospital became curious.
“What the f*ck is this guy doing?” they thought.
The curiosity fuelled him. He decided to dance even more.
Before a surgery he’d dance for two minutes until everyone was watching. Then after successful surgeries he’d dance too. His vibe became infectious. Other doctors, nurses, parents, and even sick children began to dance along with him.
Nobody could explain what the hell was going on.
His point wasn’t to go viral online and get some empty likes. He was using the joy of dancing to put people in a good mood as a form of medicine more powerful than painkillers or chemo.
“Dancing lifts the kids’ spirits. It helps them forget about being in the hospital. But it also helps me. You can’t help others if you’re drained yourself.”
The most important skill nobody taught you is the ability to stay in a great mood in the absence of things to be in a great mood about (hat-tilt Alex Hormozi).
The depressing reality of modern life
I’m a happy-go-lucky kind of person. You probably are too.
But in modern life it’s painfully hard to stay in a great mood. Haters online want to trigger you. Bosses want to gaslight you for not working hard enough. Politicians want to mess with your mind so they can get votes. Social media homepages are a cesspool of smart ass wisdom and back-handed insults to entire countries.
Even if you’re Steve Martin in the movie Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, it’s extremely hard to stay in a good mood.
If it’s not AI taking your job, it’s the cost of living making the gap between rich and poor wider. If it’s not constant health issues from the fake food we eat, it’s a lack of energy caused by sitting in an office chair looking at a screen all day.
Being in a good mood is a skill. We’re not born with it. And without being able to be in a good mood, you won’t succeed in life.
To get what you want in life, you must do this
Nobody talks about how having optimism in life is crucial.
If you think the world is screwed or America is ruining the world, you won’t have the right frame of mind to do hard work. To succeed you must find opportunities and pursue them. But if the world looks dark you won’t see opportunities.
You’ll only see problems. You’ll only see d*ckheads. You’ll only see roadblocks.
Let me be controversial…
Most people think they can’t be in a good mood because they’re special. Harsh truth: You’re not special.
Everyone’s tired.
Everyone’s overwhelmed.
The ones who win are the ones who show up anyway – Gracie Van
You must be willing to show up every day, regardless of what nonsense is going on in your life or the world. That means what you want to do in life must be broken down into a series of daily habits you do no matter what.
Now you know why most people fail in life. They break their habit streaks because they let a bad mood get in the way. All it takes is one missed day to light your dreams on fire.
The dark day I was forced to be in a good mood (that nearly took my life)
In 2021, I had $1.2M stolen from my digital wallet.
This money was set aside to buy my first house. In that house, I would live with my wife and have two children. But my poor actions stole that dream from my future family.
I felt terrible. Depressed.
I told a mentor, “It’s days like today where I understand why people walk in front of trains.”
I felt even worse when I found out from the federal police later that day that my money had gone to Russia to help fund the Ukraine war.
Innocent people would die because of my stupidity.
I could have decided this rock bottom moment was the end. I could never have trusted anyone again. I could have stopped using the internet. I could have stopped buying Bitcoin. I could have blamed myself for decades and let it hold me back.
But I didn’t.
Bizarrely, a coffee with a friend acted as a pattern interrupt. I came up with a new story. I decided on that dark day that losing $1.2M would help me make millions of dollars more. It didn’t have to be this way.
Instead, I could decide to be in a good mood. I could see it as an opportunity.
And I did.
Within a year of losing $1.2M, I’d made more than three times what I had lost. All because I decided to be in a good mood and see it as a good fortune.
Being in a bad mood forces this to happen
“Every time you hesitate, someone less talented takes your spot.”
The world rewards action, not potential. – Dr. Julie Gurner
Hesitation is the kiss of death.
Without a good mood and some optimism to guide you, your monkey brain will just take over and force you to procrastinate. Meanwhile, people much dumber than you are in a good mood and just take action.
They’re not overthinking it. They’re not jumping to conclusions and labeling it depression or saying they need to take a month off to drown in self-care. In fact, they expect bad stuff to happen. They decide to keep moving anyway.
Ironically, the biggest reason people are in a bad mood is because they feel terrible about settling for second best and not reaching their potential. That leads to frustration and even more anger that compounds and repels the very opportunities they need to succeed in life. It’s a negative flywheel.
It gets worse.
When you hesitate and accidentally choose inaction, you end up saying things like “I’ll do it tomorrow.”
Writer Gracie Van says that’s how you train your brain not to believe you. Your brain starts to see you as a liar. So it sabotages your goals because it knows you’re full of sh*t.
How you see the world determines whether you get what you want in life
I used to see the world as a toxic wasteland.
It led to dark mental illness. One critical moment that changed it all was when I went to a 4-day Tony Robbins event. It started at 9 AM.
By 9 PM that day I hadn’t taken a break, eaten lunch, or drank any water. Then at 9:30 PM I had to walk on fire. My feet were badly burned. There were visible signs.
But I felt nothing.
No hunger. No pain. No desire to drink water. No tiredness. Nothing.
How is that possible? Tony changed my state. He put me in a state beyond just being in a good mood known as euphoria. I experienced such a higher state of consciousness on that day, I couldn’t feel pain from my nasty burns.
That’s how powerful your state of mind is. It can literally help you overcome impossible situations and make you do extreme things.
It wasn’t always that way though.
When I was 18 I was dating the love of my life. She was my everything. One night we went to her friend’s house party. She disappeared for a few minutes.
I thought nothing of it. Then a high school friend arrived. I wanted to show him around my friend’s house. As we went room by room, we made it to the main bedroom. I opened the door and saw my girlfriend having s*x with another man.
That situation put me in a bad mood for about 4 years. I wish I could go back now and get those 4 years back knowing what I know now. No one teaches us the skill of being in a good mood, but they should. It’s a survival skill.
The takeaway
The more technology takes over our lives, the more susceptible we are to being in a bad mood thanks to algorithms.
Snap out of it. How you feel about life comes down to whether you choose to be in a good mood despite what happens. It’s a conscious decision. And if you make it every day, it might just change your life.
Convenience and ease have made us ruder and madder than ever. It’s time to fight back and develop the ability to be in a good mood no matter what.
If the ability to stay in a good mood is more powerful than intelligence, wealth, or connections, why is it almost never taught?
