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Welcome to the Upside podcast where we help you get unstuck in your life and your business by elevating your thinking and provoking meaningful change from the inside out. I'm your host, Teresa Flood, and let's get started. So I don't know about you, but I love a great story. Most human beings love a great story. Maybe you love to read, maybe you're, you're into the novels. I personally love a really great, like psychological thriller that is my favorite type of fictional reading to do. I love a great story with intrigue. Uh, maybe you're a movies person. I personally am not so much a movie person. I would take TV over movies. My husband does not understand me at all. But it is what it is. But most human beings, we love stories. Reality tv, such a great example of how there is a mass audience for insane drama, right? The ratings that these crazy reality TV shows get mass, mass ratings for just insane amounts of drama. And as human beings, we love a story and we also sometimes are attracted to drama. And I don't know about you, but drama in real life is a real drain. And there are two kinds of drama that happen. It's the stories that other people tell and then it's the stories that we tell ourselves. And so I wanna dive in a little bit today to the drama drain. Because remember, you only have a limited amount of energy and the older we get, I feel like that amount of energy becomes a tad bit less. But we have a limited amount of energy. And so when we spend our energy on things that are not valuable, that are not productive, that are not serving us well, or serving the people around us well, we don't have then the energy to spend on our goals, on the things that we wanna do, on making impact. And so drama can be one of the absolute largest energy sucks around us. And I want to give you some tools that, that will maybe help you avoid the drama drain so that you can have more energy to work on amazing things. So drama in and of itself though is inevitable with human beings because human beings are emotional people. I am raising 13 year old twin girls right now. There's a little bit of drama that happens in seventh grade. Guess what? There's a little bit of drama that happens with 30 year olds and 40 year olds and 50 year olds and 60 year olds and 70 year olds and 80 year olds. And if I have any 90 year olds listening to this podcast, you too, because it is a human condition. It is a human condition. So I'm going to define drama as the stories that we tell to ourselves and to others. And it's often based on our experiences, and yet we declare them as truth. So the stories that we tell others. One of the absolute fastest ways to destroy a culture is through gossip. It's that when we start telling stories that are not our stories to tell. So here's the trick on gossip, though. Gossip is not just gossip because it's false. Gossip can also be true or could. There could be some truth in it. It could be your experience, but it's not a story that you need to be telling. Even true stories can be so, so harmful when they're shared inappropriately. When you speak about somebody, you hold their reputation in your hands. It's a powerful thing when we share something about somebody else. We always say in our Keller Williams office, when productivity is high, drama is low. When productivity is low, drama is high. Meaning when we're not spending time on productive great things, we tend to get more stuck in the muck. So the most low level conversations that we can have with somebody is when we're talking about people. It takes the lowest amount of IQ to talk about what Sally did or what Bob said or whatever. Lowest amount of iq. The next kind of level of conversation is when we're talking about events, we're talking about the concert that we went to over the weekend, or we're talking about the office meeting that we had and what happened. The highest level, the most IQ that it takes is to talk about ideas, to talk about what you're learning, to talk about how you're processing something, what you're thinking about something. So the question is, is are your closest relationships based on low level IQ conversations or is it time to raise the, the level of the conversations around you? So there is such a trap of negativity. And the easiest way to bond with somebody is actually through negativity. It is the easiest, fastest way to bond with somebody. So imagine you're standing in line at the grocery store and, you know, maybe there's somebody that's cutting coupons and they're taking a bunch of time and they're count, you know, whatever. And so it's causing the, the cashier's not very good and they're really slow. And so it's causing the whole line to back up, right? And if people are starting to get frustrated, how easy is it to look at the person behind you and share a moment about that shared frustration and you instantly bond over that shared negative relationship. Rarely do you look at the person behind you and go, man, this cashier is awesome. They are fast. They are courteous. It is so, so easy to bond over negativity. And we can use that as a crux when trying to relate to people around us because it does create an instant bond. You may not be the drama creator. You may just be a drama collector. And so I want to talk to all of you drama collectors out there. If you feel like you are the one that everybody constantly dumps on, everybody is bringing you the negativity. Everybody is. And maybe it's shrouded in there asking for advice, but you are the one that the drama gets dumped on. I would encourage you to pause for a moment and ask yourself why. Is there a reason that you're inviting that drama in? Are you being a listening ear when you need to be shutting it down? Are you allowing yourself to bond with others or to feel like you have an importance overhearing that kind of negativity? Because here's the problem. It's going to drain your energy. It's gonna drain your energy. You need to be putting your energy towards positivity and towards things that are going to matter. I tell my girls this all the time, but those who gossip to you will gossip about you. Those who gossip to you will gossip about you. So when we. Again, stories that can be true, but that are not our stories to tell, that are hurting a reputation. Remember, defend others when they're not present as you would want to be defended. That's a powerful thing in life. Defend others even if you don't like them, even if you think it might be true, defend them in the presence of other people just the way that you would want to be defended. And then there's also. So that's the stories that happen with other people, but there's also the stories that we tell ourselves. And what I mean by that is, and I'm talking specifically the stories we tell ourselves about other people. And we often pass judgment on other people's motives and we don't actually know. We make assumptions and we pass judgments. And what it actually does is it reveals more about us than it reveals about them. When we make assumptions about how somebody else is actually thinking or why somebody did something, usually I'm not saying always, but usually it's because deep down we know that's how we would feel. Deep down we know that's how we would act. We would have a negative assumption on that. And so then we put that on somebody else. We've got to give ourselves grace and other people grace. A lot of times we give Ourselves, Grace. We judge ourselves by our intentions, but we judge everybody else by their actions. And so I would just. I would just say part of avoiding the drama, the internal war that we have sometimes that we're creating, we're listening to these stories that we don't even know if they're based in fact. We don't even know if they're true. We don't even know if somebody actually intended that or that was their motivation or their intention. And you will always found evidence for what you believe to be true. So if you believe somebody didn't speak to you at the party because they're jealous of you, you will go look for all of the evidence for that. Maybe they were just having a bad day. Maybe they were just distracted by something else, Right? And your mindset will shape your reality. So ask yourself this question. What am I making this mean? What am I making this mean? You get to decide everything that happens to you and around you. You get to choose the meaning of it. You do. You get to choose what it means. So choose things to mean by giving grace to other people. Stop the cycle. Believe the best in other people. It will help you believe the best in yourself. If you struggle with feeling hard on yourself, you judge yourself a lot. Start extending grace to other people. Start defending other people in their absence. Start protecting their reputations and guarding the culture in the in the tribes and the communities that you're a part of. Keep your culture high, keep your emotions in track and avoid the drama drain. Remember, you only have so much energy. Use it for the things that matter. When you invest in your growth every single day, it will lead you. Great returns yield you great returns in your life and in your business. Thank you for listening to the Upside podcast. I'm Teresa Flood. I appreciate you. Please go subscribe, like or share this episode if it challenged you. And I can't wait to see you next week. Thank you always for tuning in.