E129: Letting Go of Pessimism with Amy Eddy

Amy Eddy is the Vice President and Executive Agent of BigSpeak, a company that works with top keynote speakers, business speakers, motivational speakers getting them on major stages as well as working with big events to land major keynotes.

Amy advocates for her clients, empowers them to make the right investment, and is energized by the potential of the human spirit.

Here are some power takeaways from today’s conversation:

Happiness is a muscle we can choose to make strong or not.
The study on pessimists and optimists
How Amy got into the speaking industry
Finding the good out of the bad things happening in the world
The power of habits
How do you define success?

Episode Highlights:

Happiness is a Choice

Happiness is a muscle you can choose to make stronger or not. This is even backed by science that you can choose to push them in whatever direction you choose. We can’t cure ourselves of all diseases just by thinking positively. But there's a lot we can do. We have way more power than we realize. But many people are hardwired to always look at what can go wrong.

Letting Go of Pessimism

Pessimism is a weight you can choose to let go of but it takes time. People have the tendency to think about what other people think of them but we can make practices to stop feeding that and to cancel out that noise. There are so many variables and thoughts flying around in your mind about all the possible outcomes of what you're saying and how it'll affect that person versus what you're wearing and how it will affect their thought of you.

When you look at several hundred years back, terrible things have happened. Somehow, this gives you a sense of peace in knowing that this is not the end of the world. Things have always been hard for a lot of people but there's always something good that happens despite the bad things.

The Power of Habits

Our brain doesn't want to change and it wants to be in auto mode where you're not consciously thinking about the physical activity you're doing. We have to work hard and choose to get it to go in a different direction and get it off idle or autopilot. For instance, people always talk about losing weight. We have all the information and facts out there about weight loss but we're the fattest country in the world. And that's because change is hard. You have to go against your brain and what your body wants to naturally do. It takes brain capacity to rewire the system so you can't do a whole lot at once. You need to focus on one thing.

Defining Success

Be able to define what is success for you. What is success going to look like for you? We may not always be at our best at times, but what's important is you're able to go back to what's good for you. More sales, more networking, and more opportunities are good things. Those aren't inherently bad. But we can get sucked into it and that's not good long-term. And that is not how you should define success.

Resources Mentioned:

The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss

Atomic Habits by James Clear

Pessimists Archive Podcast

--- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/erikecabral/support