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Travis Chappell
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You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by gohighlevel. Com. For a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on the planet, just go to gohighlevel.com travis what's going on everybody? Welcome back to the show. This episode, it's just me, you and the mic and we are talking a little bit about how to feel better. I've noticed this trend recently over the last, you know, know, five to 10 years really, since I've been diving deep into the personal development space where people like us, who are some of the most blessed people to have ever existed on this planet, meaning that this isn't. We're not, we're not constantly worried about where our next meal is coming from. We're not drinking dirty water. We're not, were not, you know, being conquered by other emperors trying to expand their kingdoms, and we're not fighting battles with swords, even though we're just a farmer or something like that. The life that we have been given, the time that we're alive is the best time in history to be alive. Yet we are in the middle of a mental health crisis. So what gives? What's the deal? How is it possible that we have, that we've got dropped into this beautiful moment in time, yet a huge portion of us are still walking around feeling like, you know, we're trying to escape the saber toothed tiger who's threatening our camp or something like that. It just, it seems like a wild time. So these are just a few things that I wrote down. I, I don't have much to say about these other than this is just my anecdotal experience for things that I do to make myself feel better. When I notice that there's just this negative trend of my mood over time, which is also a good reason to track these things as much as you can, to even like take an account, write out numbers for like how you felt that day so you can look at it over a four or five month, six month period and then have some sort of like an idea, like a plot on A graph of like, oh, my mood seems to be overall trending downward over the last six months. That's a problem. Maybe I should do something to address that. So here's a few things that I've done over the years to just feel better. First off, and this one gets me in trouble sometimes. And look, I don't, I don't know what to say about that. If you disagree with me, you disagree with me. But this has been wildly helpful for me in my life, and that is stop over consuming or talking about things that are negative and outside of your control. And the biggest culprit behind this is politics. We can't get away from politics. It's everywhere. You open up your phone. Even for somebody like me who tries not to engage in it that much, I still get fed all of these stuff, all of these things in my, in my social media feed about politics. And there's always, you know, you try to get away from it and then some, you know, comedian you follow has a politician on or something like that, and it's just like, ah, man, why can't we just not talk about this stuff all the damn time? And I first heard this from Tim Ferriss, I believe it was in his book the Four Hour Workweek, where he was talking basically about productivity hacks, focus hacks. And this is one of the things that he said. And from that point forward, a few years ago, I decided to really just try to move this stuff out of my, my milieu, my, my daily life. And once you, you know, imagine, imagine that. Imagine that it actually worked. Because what happens is media and the news have trended in a direction of attention. They're also a part of the attention economy, just like all of us who are podcasting or creating stuff are. The, the difference is that they used to be a trusted source of objective events that were occurring around the world. So people would tune into their television sets all at the same time, have their trusted anchor and download all the information, the news of the day. And then 24, 7News started rolling around and then people started doing commentary. And then a lot of the stuff is just opinions about events that are happening. And then you have not just the host's opinion, but then they bring on six guests at the same time, and they're all arguing with each other, fighting over each other. It's basically, basically to me, what it's become is the intellectual's soap opera. It's the person who would perceive themselves or categorize themselves as being someone who's intelligent, somebody who reads A lot. Maybe has a degree or got a master's or something like that. And they look at it as their responsibility to be aware of all of these events that are happening around the world, yet it has become like their version of reality television where they're watching this again, this, this negative energy, this combative energy in front of their eyes. Basically all day, every day they just have the news on and they're watching all these people argue and fight over all of these things and give their opinion, this person gives their opinion. And to me, it is only something that will prevent you from accomplishing any of the things that you set your mind to because it pulls you into these rabbit holes of, of, of a negativity spiral. And there's just, it's really difficult to get out of those things. And I think that like, you won't notice it day one, you won't notice it day two. But again, over a 5, 6, 7, 8 month period where you've just over consumed too much politics, you're just going to find yourself feeling crappier. Why? Because it's a massive input. Your inputs become your outputs. So if you're constantly receiving this input of negativity, then you have no choice but to output some of that negativity and you're just going to feel like an overall dampening of your mood and then you're going to catastrophize everything that the people on the news are catastrophizing, thinking that the world is burning. And we're on a cruise. My wife and I went on a, on a, on a workaholics cruise. So for those of you who watch the show, workaholics, Adam Divine and Anders and, and, and Blake and Kyle Noek, all this guys. So we went on this cruise and we were in this, like this, this podcast, the live podcast with Chad Kroger and JT Par, who I think are just hilarious. They, they do all these like city council, they, they actually like up these proposals and it's like dead. They're, they, they're fully and completely in character the whole time. And it blows my mind how they do it because they, they're. Anyway, they're hilarious. Anyway, so we're in this room, they're doing this live podcast. At the end, they open it up to Q and A and there were more than one questions that were, regarding, like the political climate of, of, you know, what we're all dealing with right now. And there's this one girl who mentioned something about, asked them something about if they wanted kids or something. And then they asked her if she wanted kids and she was like, I just don't feel comfortable bringing a child into the world the way that it is right now. And in my mind, like it was such a jarring thing for me to hear because of what I mentioned at the very beginning of this episode, which is that there's never been a better time to do this. Like, at what point in history would have been better for you to go back to travel back to and bring a kid into that version of the world? It is this, it is this adopted belief of pessimism that is destroying people's lives and futures. And to think that that would be something that would prevent somebody from the joy of raising a child because they're bought into some political ideology that's told them that this version of the world is way worse than the version of the world that we knew 20 years ago, 40 years ago, 80 years ago is, it's, it's a ridiculous premise, but we're bought into it because we just soak in all of this terrible negative energy that just can't help but permeate to your core and then come out in, manifest itself in these types of, of life altering belief systems. And it was wild to see it happen in person. And they handled it really well when they were, when they were on stage. I forget exactly what they said, but it was sort of along the lines of what I, sort of what I'm saying, which is like, you know, there's always going to be obstacles to raising kids. There's always going to be problems that arise. And if you feel that there's a problem with the world, then, then maybe having a kid and raising your kid with the beliefs that you have might be a potential solution to the problems that are, that you believe are making life objectively terrible at the moment in your mind. I guess I should say subjectively terrible. So stop over consuming the news, guys. There's just a stat that I read recently. I might butcher it, but you can look it up and Google fact check me on this if it sounds a little bit too high, but it was something. Close to 80% of news headlines are written with some form of a negativity bias because they know the data, they know what gets attention. They know what's going to get you to click that link. They know what's going to get you to watch through the commercial break. 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Travis Chappell
us and included in this bucket because I find myself going down some of these rabbit holes recently. In fact, it was a conversation that I had with a friend of mine who is even less engaged in politics because he's constantly working and just didn't have time for it. And there was a couple of things that I brought up that he was like oblivious and unaware of. And I was like, I kind of miss being oblivious to these types of things because there's just no use. It's wildly outside of my control. There's nothing that I can do about it. All it does is just stir this hatred and anger inside of me for some other group that I have not personally met or connected with or had conversations with. And I just find it to be an objective waste of time for the most part, especially if you're not already in a position where you can do something about it. Like, there's some people that I see that are following this arc of like, they built value through a business or they were a creator or something, and then they had this massive exit or they became really huge and then they started getting into politics and it's like, I don't, I don't like it when I see it because I preferred their other content before they became political. But I can at least understand where they're coming from. Where it's like, okay, well, you're worth a half a billion dollars now. You know, you actually have the ability to make an impact on this and maybe there are some things that you can control about some of the outcomes that you don't like that are happening in the world around you. But for, but for the majority of us normal people who are just focused on paying the bills, living a good life, providing for our family, having a good time with our friends. It just like inter, like interjecting these things into our daily lives is objectively making our lives worse. And you see, I mean, the last election cycle, last couple election cycles, we've seen lifelong friendships destroyed over the fact that somebody dared to post something online about their political beliefs. And then all these other people are, are making them feel bad for those things or they're further confirming those things, or it's like, look, neither one of those is great. And again, the majority of this is outside of your control. And if you're not a political, like if you're, if that's not what you're doing for a living, if you're not running for office, or if you're not trying to affect policy change, if you're not a lobbyist, if you're not actively involved in that world, I just don't see a ton of reason to be fully educated on everything. Because that's the problem, right, is that you can't be fully educated on everything, first of all, because we're not in the, in the rooms behind closed doors where all the decisions are actually being made. So we don't even have all the information. You know, we think that we have more information, information than we do, but we really don't. And then, and then also there's nothing that you can do about it even if you had the information at hand. And so, yeah, I just, I just find that the majority of the time that you're spending doing those things, it's just going to be, it's going to be more of a negative effect over your life than a positive effect. And I'm not suggesting that you fully and completely bury your head in the sand and just not know anything about what's going on in the world. But my sort of view on it is like, if it's a big enough thing, I'll hear about it. Like, if it's, if it's enough of, if it's something that's worthy of being known, then somebody's going to tell me about it at some point. But like I said, I fight back against the concept that everybody should just have a fully fleshed out opinion about everything. It's just like we don't have all the information. There's people who dedicate their entire lives to this one policy that you're talking about from this armchair expert position, you know, how we can solve the water crisis or by doing this, I don't know why we don't just do this. If they elected me, we'd take care of it in three months. It's like really, you think that you, like the, the, the version of you that you are right now would, if you were in office, you would be able to just solve this problem that people have spent decades dedicating their entire lives to research and, and trying to solve themselves. It's, it's wildly nuanced, it's almost impossible to solve from our perspective. And so, and, and, and you, the time that is spent worrying about all these other things, if that time was spent doing, doing other things that actually affected your day to day life, then you would find the overall quality of your life to be better by just focusing on other things that actually have the ability to create change in your life. So limit your news sources, you know, mute commercials if you have to stop, stop listening to all these political podcasts in yours, in your free time, in your spare time, and listen to stuff that's going to be more encouraging. Choose the inputs that are going to encourage you or that to enrich your soul or your psyche. Choose the things that are going to allow you to live a better version of life, not a worse version of life. Because if you get sucked into these negativity bias headlines, then you're just going to start adopting this worldview that everything's negative, that the world is burning and that we live in a terrible time and everything's horrible. And if you believe that about the world, that it's really difficult to see the opportunity that exists through all of the bullshit. Whereas if you adopt the other perspective, you're going to start noticing opportunities open up to you because that's the belief that you're adopting. The, the, the, the fact is that nobody on this planet sees reality as it is. We all see reality through our skewed perspective. That is the version of reality that you see. So the cool thing about that is if that is the case, then you get to choose which version of reality you accept as truth in your life. And so I look at it as if I can choose a version of reality that is useful to me and not harmful to others, then I'm going to choose that versus something that is harmful to me, even if it's not harmful to others. And I think a lot of people are just deluding themselves into believing that everything's burning and the world is on fire and there's no opportunity and the economy sucks and I can't get a job and I can't do this And I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't. And it's like, man, well, it's really difficult to try to create any sort of abundance in your life if that's the initial belief that you're holding true. And so yeah, stop, stop over consuming negative things in general. I think politics is the first example that comes to mind because it's so prevalent and it permeates every area of our society and it's something that you sort of get criticized for not caring about or you, you, you know, you get, you get lumped into a bucket of privileged people who just can't afford to not care about those things or something. I don't know. I just, I just find it to be extremely useful to remove myself from all that stuff as much as I poss. And focus on the positives, focus on the great stuff that I, that I have. The, the awesome opportunities that the world affords to me now, the beautiful time that we live in and all the amazing things that we're blessed with, especially as Americans and especially in the year 2026. So stop over consuming negative things. Next, schedule time with friends and family. The number one common denominator between all the blue zones on this planet. The blue zone. And if you haven't heard of blue zones, blue zones are the, the parts of the planet where there's the highest of centenarians, people who live to be past a hundred. And what they found through studying these different, these, these five different regions on the, on the planet is that none of them follow the same diet. None of them, none of them follow sort of these traditional biohacking things. Like, like, like some of these communities are active smokers. They drink alcohol. They're not doing all, they're, they're not, you know, doing cold plunges and, and breath work and meditation and all this other stuff that we've told ourselves is, is the thing that's going to make us live past 100. The number one common denominator between all of them is a very strong sense of belonging and community, bar none. That is the number one thing that unites all of these blue zones. So get more actively involved and plugged into the community that you have. If you don't have one, then you got to do the hard work of finding one and building that community. Like getting, getting just laughing and enjoying each other's company and talking about things that are beneficial for you and having stimulating conversations with people that you care about. Those types of things are going to allow you to Live a much better version of life. Schedule a game night, schedule a dinner party, schedule of, you know, go see some comedy, go watch something that makes you laugh, makes you smile instead of something that makes you upset. Go to, go to a concert, get around some good music, get around some good, good, you know, not to use this term too much, but get around some good vibes and you know it will raise your overall energy significantly. So schedule time for community style events, things that will get you more plugged in to feel like feeling a sense of belonging with people that you love but also with, with the community at large. Like that's the beautiful thing about comedy or concerts or things like that is you get into room with a bunch of people who you don't know. But you're all sort of on this same wavelength of energy. You're all sort of on, like on this higher, you know, know, whatever vibration, if you want to call it that. And, and the more you do those things, the more enriched you're going to feel on the inside, the better you're going to feel on a day to day basis. Lastly, this is this, if there's a hack to feeling better, this is the hack. And it's gratitude. Practice gratitude. It's just like anything else. The more you practice it, the better you get at doing it. And it sounds silly because like growing up to me it was always just like Thanksgiving time. Write down all the things that you're grateful for. You know, let's go around the table before we eat our turkey and say something that we're grateful, grateful for. And before it was just like I'm making a list, you know what I mean? And so when I say practice gratitude, it's not just like oh, here's some things I'm grateful for. And then let's move on to the day. It's write down those things, take two, three, four minutes and just really feel how grateful you are for the presence of those things in your life. And it can be something massive like a family member beating cancer or something like that, like this, this awesome feeling of victory that you have as a group, as a unit over this terrible disease. But it could also just be something simple like the smell of coffee in the morning or a hug from your spouse, or watching your kids go down a water slide for the first time. Anything like this, from this wide range of things that we of teeny tiny things to huge things to things we take for granted, like our eyesight or the ability to walk, or the ability to hear, to taste, touch, smell, to Experience the world. To be able to hike in nature and see this view, that just is incredible. And it stimulates your mind. Try as much as you can to practice this gratitude on a daily basis. Because it's impossible to be anxious and grateful at the same time. It's impossible to be stressed and grateful at the same time. It's possible to be depressed and grateful at the same time. You can't experience both of those emotions at the same time. So the more you practice this gratitude thing, the more likely you are to end up in that state more throughout the day. And so have this, like, practice of gratitude. But then secondarily, something that's been really helpful for me is whenever I notice that I'm in a really good state, a state that I would. That I would mark as a state that I would like to be in more. Like, whatever that is. Peace, gratitude, joy, happiness, fulfillment, meaning any of those types of. You know, I try to stay away from saying, like, positive emotions or negative emotions or whatever, but anything that I would view as something that enriches the quality of my life or the way that I feel about the quality of my life, anytime I'm feeling that on accident, I try to use that as a trigger to feel that emotion as much as I possibly can. So instead of. Instead of, you know, seeing my kid do something really cool or say something to me that. That is just really sweet or something like that, and then I just go, oh, that was cool. And then I just move on and get back into my phone or get back into working or something. I try my best. I don't. And I don't do it every time. And I'm not. And I'm. I'm constantly working on this because it's something that needs to be worked on. But it's been helpful for me to not just have this, like, practice of gratitude, you know, in the morning when you write in a journal or something like that, but also to have this. This. This. This reinforcement of the good feeling that I have in any particular moment. So now when I see something or I'm experiencing this feeling, I try to just close my eyes and allow myself to feel it to. To the fullest possible extent. Because every time you do that, you're. You're basically. You're basically expanding the neural pathways in your brain to allow your default state to be pushed more into the positive direction, rather. In. Rather to be pushed more into the negative direction. That's where a lot of these things come from. Anxiety, fear, stress. Some of these things that we would label as negative things. A lot of it comes from the fact that that's sort of what our brains are hardwired to do. We are more motivated by fear than we are anything else. That's just, just, you know, evolutionarily true. So the, the more that you can fight back against that, the more that you can practice just allowing yourself to be in that state, the more habitual it becomes, the. The easier it is for your neurons to fire into that direction rather to fire into another direction. It's like forging a path in a field. You know, the first time somebody walks through it, they got a machete through all this brush and stuff. But then when the, you know, five
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Yes.
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You guessed it, Disney+US-TH person walks through that area. It's basically a path because all the brush has been worn down and there's a clear way to, to travel. And it's much easier to get to the destination. It's the same thing that's happening in your brain, at least, at least how I understand it. I'm no neuroscientist, but I've read a good amount about it. And that's basically how I have, how I've interpreted it is basically you have these neural pathways, and the more that you allow your brain to go to these areas and then feel it to the fullest, fullest extent, the more that you're, you're, you're chopping away at the brush so that next time it's a little bit easier to go in that direction than it is for you to go to the other direction of anxiety or fear or stress or any of these other things that we would look at. So these are just a few things. Like I said, these are not steeped in research, although some of them are definitely the gratitude thing, the neural pathway thing. A lot of these things are, are, are very much steeped in research. I'm just saying that these are the things that I've done in my life when I catch myself being in a negative mood more often than a positive mood. These are some of the things that I try to implement into my life to make sure that I can have control over the mood that I have versus allowing my mood to just adjust with the ebbs and flows of life. Whether I got enough sleep the night before or this event happened that I perceived as negative and then I'm going to immediately go back into this negative state. Like if I'm feeling this, I like to just, hey, monitor my inputs. Am I over consuming negative things? Am I over consuming negative marketing messages? Am I over consuming political discussions? Am I over consuming arguments and religious ideologies and warring and, and and contention? Or am I over consuming or you know, not over consuming but am I consuming good things, positive things, things that make me feel better? So monitor your inputs, stop consuming politics. That's the first thing. And then schedule time with friends and family. Get more connected to the community that you have. Like local community, family, friends, but then also community at large. And then also a gratitude practice. Those are the things that I do to help myself feel better. So hopefully that is helpful for you if you're listening right now as well. And that's it for this episode of the show. As always, you can reach out to me on Instagram, Travis Chappell or just shoot me an email. Travisravischapel.com, love to talk about any of these things with any of you. And if you have any questions, shoot them over so we can address them on a future episode. Thanks for tuning in to this one. We'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace.
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Host: Travis Chappell
Date: March 21, 2026
In this solo episode, Travis Chappell delves into the surprising paradox of living in the most prosperous era in human history while simultaneously facing a mental health crisis. He explains his personal strategies for feeling better—focusing especially on protecting your mental inputs, intentionally cultivating community, and building a robust gratitude practice. Travis shares stories, research, and actionable steps, seeking to empower listeners to make more money and live better by first improving the way they feel.
Travis closes with a summary: feeling better isn't about escaping reality, but about choosing your inputs, intentionally building community, and practicing gratitude until it becomes your default state. These simple shifts—protecting your mind, curating your inputs, and cultivating real connections—can transform your sense of possibility and fulfillment, providing a powerful foundation for making more money and living your best life.
Feedback, questions, or stories? Connect with Travis on Instagram @travischappell or via email.