Stop Seeing the Negative: Embrace Simple Upgrades for a Better Life

Dr. Christine Li [00:00:00]:
Welcome back to the Make Time For Success podcast. This is episode number 203. Those of you who have been following and listening to this podcast for some time know that this show is all about living a happier, healthier, more productive and fulfilled life. And it has been my honor to put this material together for you because I really want to see everyone feeling better and doing better and being excited about living and what is to come. This episode really focuses in on what it takes to have a positive attitude even when times are stressful, even when you are leaning into worry, even when things are feeling like everything's a strain. I will be teaching in this episode why you might tend to lean in that direction in the first place, and then I'm gonna teach you about the concept of a life upgrade and how you can create something like a life upgrade today, right after you finish the episode. It's gonna be really simple, really enjoyable, and really fruitful for you. So let's go listen to this quick episode together now.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:25]:
Hi. I'm Dr Christine Li, and I'm a psychologist and a procrastination coach. I've helped thousands of people move past procrastination and overwhelm so they could begin working to their potential. In this podcast, you're going to learn powerful strategies for getting your mind, body, and energy to work together so that you can focus on what's really important and accomplish the goals you want to achieve. When you start living within your full power, you're going to see how being productive can be easy and how you can create success on demand. Welcome to the make time for success podcast. Today on the podcast, we're gonna be talking about the concept of a life upgrade. I don't know if I coined the term.

Dr. Christine Li [00:02:17]:
I probably did not, but I do tend to throw this term around a lot lately. I use it in my own life when I'm just trying to get things done and trying to point my nose in the right direction of expansion, of improvement, of well-being, of health, all of those good things. But I also use the term when I'm creating content for my audience on TikTok and Instagram and also when I'm coaching my clients in live sessions, my coaching clients. So I thought I would bring the concept of a life upgrade here on the podcast as well because I want you all to know that you can make your life feel much less burdensome and turn it into a situation where you get to say, oh, I'm gonna improve this. Oh, I'm gonna improve that anytime that you want. The concept is really simple, and I'm just going to explain the background thinking of the concept, and we're gonna do a little exercise where you can design your own life upgrade and get right to it. So I think before we talk about life upgrades as a concept and getting into the exercise of building them, I need to explain what the negativity bias is. That is a phrase you may have heard before.

Dr. Christine Li [00:03:39]:
You may never have heard it before, but it is something that you certainly have experienced if you know anyone who tends to worry a lot, if you know someone who tends to fear the worst, if you know someone who assumes that the outcome is going to be negative, then you've been in the vicinity of the negativity bias. And, of course, we've all been there because we've all worried at a certain point in our lives. The negativity bias is the concept that we have developed over time in an evolutionarily advantageous way to have a bias towards thinking about the negative. Our ancestors needed to do this in order to stay clear of environmental dangers, of predators, of things that were going to potentially threaten their survival. And by being alert to the possibilities of negative things in the environment, we got to be here fully healthy, fully vibrant, and doing our thing. So we, I think, have to appreciate the fact that each of us has this built in negativity bias where we lean negative just to be sure, just to be careful that we're going to survive because survival is the biggest and most important goal, of course. The thing about the negativity bias is that we're no longer in so much danger from being attacked by wild animals or being short on survival tools and food and the basics of life, and yet, sometimes, we act as if we are still in that level of danger, that we're still imagining that there's a constant threat. And although there are benefits to having a negativity bias, I think there can be a lot of problems when we stick to that negativity bias so closely.

Dr. Christine Li [00:05:52]:
I think we can become chronic worriers. I think we can increase our stress levels. I think we can also distort our views of what is actually going on. In reality, life is complicated. There are certainly negative things that are happening every day, but there are also always so many positive, wonderful things that are happening in our midst, and my whole take on productivity and life expansion is that we have to make it a really strong, comfortable, familiar habit to look at what is going right, to have a positivity bias while, of course, not doing anything that would endanger our survival. So we're going to flip the script on that negativity bias so that we can help you see the possibility and the potential in everyday moments. It doesn't have to be an Academy Award to let you up. It could just be, wow.

Dr. Christine Li [00:06:50]:
I cleaned the kitchen today, or, wow. I stopped, Bill from taking my money over and over and over again every month because I don't use that account or subscription anymore. That can be celebrated as a life upgrade, as a win, as something that actually protects you but also gives you joy and makes you feel proud of yourself. At this point in the podcast, I also wanna introduce the small wins theory, which is a theory that says that small upgrades lead to big momentum and positive change, and I think we've all experienced the small wins theory as well. We've all had that moment in time where we did something almost accidentally. Like, we drove to the store and did our chores, but then we ended up being able to make a beautiful meal for our family, something like that. We're just getting started. We're just doing step number 1 in the task list, can open up your feeling of wellness, can make you feel like you don't have to drag yourself into the task anymore, that you end up feeling like you've upgraded things just with that first step.

Dr. Christine Li [00:08:09]:
Your mood goes up and your motivation goes up. I mentioned the small wins theory because it is really a central tenet for how I teach my clients. I teach people how to become simply productive, and the emphasis is on the part that says simple because I think the reason why so many people fall into the trap of long time intense procrastination and dread of their work is because they're thinking that in order to start, they have to do something really large. They have to do the heavy lifting, and if you're out of shape or you haven't worked in a while or you haven't really seen yourself as a heavy lifter, it's going to be really hard to start any movement whatsoever, and then instead of small wins, you have no wins, and so it is my goal to teach people how to use this simply productive method to aim for the small wins, to see how momentum picks up once you've started and gotten a win, once you've decided I'm deserving of wins, once you've decided that you're addicted to the idea of creating small wins multiple times a day and streaming them together and stringing them together and seeing bigger and better wins to the point where you feel like you've absolutely upgraded your life. Okay. Now I think we're ready to talk about the life upgrade. I was taught this by a mentor named Melanie Moore. I've just recently reconnected with her, and we had a great session.

Dr. Christine Li [00:09:57]:
She was actually a guest expert in my program, Simply Productive, recently, and she was the one who, many, many years ago, explained what an upgrade can entail. You don't have to wait until all your to do list items are taken care of to do the upgrade. You don't have to wait for the perfect moment to do the upgrade. You could just decide, you know what? I wanna get into the habit of seeing myself in an elevated state, so I'm going to do that upgrade right now. There is no reason to delay, and I think that's why I'm putting a whole episode focusing on the concept of a life upgrade because I think we tend to wait. It's kind of like the negativity bias. If everything's equal, we're gonna lean negative. With life upgrades, I think if everything's equal, we're gonna tend to delay making the upgrade because, after all, it sometimes does take energy, resources, finances, time, planning, scheduling, all of those things, but, again, I'm gonna really strongly argue for breaking that habit of leaning towards delay in all areas, I think, in life.

Dr. Christine Li [00:11:13]:
I think it's a good strategy to have to become simply productive and just get on with the show when you know what show you wanna see. So I'm gonna ask you a few questions before I ask you to create your own life grade upgrade. I'm gonna ask you, what have you been avoiding upgrading? And I have a feeling, because I've done this exercise with my clients and on TikTok, that you're gonna come up with 1 or 2 things very, very easily, and that is fine. We've all been there. We all have things on our wish list of upgrades, and that's something that you can actually do. You can make a whole list of upgrades that you wanna see happen. That can make thinking about the life upgrades even easier. The second question I have for you is what is delaying this upgrade costing you emotionally, mentally, or physically? What is not having that upgrade in place already costing you? And the third question is, what positive change could happen if you made this upgrade right now or right after you turn off this podcast episode? How would your life feel different? How would you feel different? How might this small change and small win affect other areas of your life? I wanna insert here an example that came in my life when I was teaching this lesson to my students, and I heard everybody's varied responses of what they wanted to do, what they planned to do, what they were resisting doing before, and I felt this surge inside of me of a desire to fix my bedroom, sink faucet.

Dr. Christine Li [00:13:07]:
I have been living without a cold water faucet handle for years, and every day and every night and sometimes even more than that, I go into that bathroom, and I have to process mentally, emotionally, and physically that I can't really use the cold water easily. And I've tolerated this for so long, and right after teaching my clients this life grade episode, I went and took a first step towards getting that remedied. I was so happy to do that. I was so frustrated with myself for having lived with that for so long, and I think it's all gonna be okay when, basically, the whole system has to get overhauled because of this broken piece, but I know I'm going to feel so much better in these kind of small, maybe unspeakable ways, but ways that really matter, that really affect my day to day life and how I feel about my bathroom, the use of water in the room, and my life. So I just wanna point out that the smallest thing, it feels small to me, can lead to a really big effect. So take it from me. Do not discount the small move, the small fix, the small upgrade, or the small win. I think life is really made up of all the smallest moments.

Dr. Christine Li [00:14:41]:
When you think about it, that's how we get places. That's how we learn things. That's how we transition from one state of being an identity to another. We do it with small movements, so now's the climax of the episode. What are you going to do as a life upgrade? I hope I've convinced you that it will be worth your time, your effort carving out that dream in your home or even in your mindset. You can upgrade your mindset. You don't even have to move anything to do that, but maybe you can do something that you've been promising yourself you will get to, and you're gonna do that within, let's say, a week of this episode coming into your ears. Alright? So take action, and then what you can do is celebrate.

Dr. Christine Li [00:15:32]:
That's a piece that we don't wanna forget. Really, really celebrate. Be proud of yourself for taking care of business. Get into this habit of looking for the small win that you can do right away, and then I would love it if you shared the win, the upgrade, and the larger ripple effect of creating a life upgrade with me. You can reach out to me on TikTok or Instagram. I'm at procrastination coach on both platforms, and in the show notes, there's actually a place for you to send me a text message as well. That's relatively new, but I would love for you to use that feature in the podcast show notes as well. So enjoy doing the life upgrades.

Dr. Christine Li [00:16:18]:
Thank you so much for being here and listening to this explanation of what it's like to elevate your life right away. If you need a summary sheet for this episode, I think it would be a good idea to get one. You can go to my free download by going to the link maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/upgrade. You can go to maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/upgrade. And that wraps up today's episode. I'm so excited that you are here with me, that we get to do this life journey together, and I can't wait to create next week's episode for you. Take care. Have a great one.

Dr. Christine Li [00:17:02]:
Bye. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Make Time For Success podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard, you can subscribe to make sure you get notified of upcoming episodes. You can also visit our website, maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com, for past episodes, show notes, and all the resources we mentioned on the show. Feel free to connect with me over on Instagram too. You can find me there under the name Send me a d m, and let me know what your thoughts are about the episodes you've been listening to. And let me know any topics that you might like me to talk about on the show. I'd love to hear all about how you're making time for success.

Dr. Christine Li [00:17:45]:
Talk to you soon.