Darrin Barney on how to thrive even in difficult times

«Circumstances are not tied to creating joy», Ronja

In this interview you‘ll get to know Darrin Barney whom I met at an event from Bo Eason in 2019. He lives with his familiy in Colorado, USA and describes himself as a husband and father of a family that brings him pride & joy. He is a business owner of a car company since 20 years, a business coach and a certified high performance coach trained by Brendon Burchard.

Darrin is a multitalented, radiant and cheerful person and I‘m super excited to share his take on the world in this interview. We talk about how not to get stuck in situations like the one we‘re living through right now (at time of recording it‘s March 2020) and how you can thrive even in difficult times.

My first question is how Darrin brings and creates joy in his everday life and his answer is: «focusing on the positive». «We want to plan for the worst and expect the best», he adds. Especially these days he emphasizes the importance of planning a bright future that you can look forward to. Gratitude is super important and powerful and even when you feel like you‘ve got nothing at all, you can always be greateful to be alive.

Darrin plans his day in the morning and reviews it in the evening. Planning in the morning leads to starting each day with excitement and joy towards what will happen that day. Think about three things you want to do today. Think about how you can make a difference, how you can be optimistic and how you can serve today.
If you‘re feeling stuck at home or if you‘re feeling useless, go into action. It can be things like helping your neighbours with their shopping or walking their dog and never forget, no matter how small you think the favor is, it‘ll have a huge impact on the receiving person. Create good memories that you can look back to, do sports, learn something new, enjoy time with your familiy, (re)connect with people, write letters, plan what you‘re going to do next. You get to choose your day.

Darrin talks about that one time, when his 3 year old son wanted to drive around in the car with no particular destination. He told his father that he was feeling lonely, because they were stuck at home. Darrin called all their friends that were living nearby and they stood in front of the house and waved to them. Sometimes you run the risk of being stuck in a negative bubble – especially when everybody is asked to stay at home – and then it‘s even more important to focus on being happy and positive, to prevent the home from becoming a place where the focus lies on negative things, because of all the news and stuff that is going on in the world. Darrin and his familiy discussed the negative things that could happen but then they moved forward and are now focusing on all the awesome stuff that awaits them in the future like going on a vacation together.

I ask Darrin about a prompt that people could journal about and this is his answer: «Plan for the worst, make a list and then move on and plan for a bright future.» I complement this with the idea to share it with a friend or a family member. Let‘s all talk more about our plans and visions!

You can watch our conversation here:

Resources and people that we talked about during the interview:

• Brad Yates (EFT)

• Brendon Burchard