There certainly are times when people must be concerned to protect their own safety and the wellbeing of their company or some other group of people. To think negatively about everything, however, erects a wall of gloom around anything one tries to do during the whole day. The result is inefficiency, poor decisions, and deteriorating relationships. Success opportunities will be lost, your associates will be disgusted, and you end your day surrounded with feelings of doom, just in time to begin the cycle all over again.
How can the negative cycle be broken? Some advisors recommend never looking at TV or reading a newspaper or magazine. People among my LinkedIn connections say this is what they do, and some in my own circle of friends and family completely ignore everything going on in the world around them. This is unacceptable. If our early ancestors had turned off their surroundings, none of us would be here—a dinosaur would have eaten them all. Everyone needs enough information to protect the things most important to them; the rest of the bad stuff has to be discarded. Unfortunately, most people are wired from birth to be negative--probably a strong tie back to ancestral security needs.
Such ties are often difficult to change, but success requires the effort to modify the gloom and doom attitude, at least for short periods. After that it may be necessary to start the optimistic cycle all over again, repeatedly.
That’s what this article is about—how to get rid of negative thinking, at least long enough to accomplish the positive things you want and must do each day. Pay attention to these ideas and try those that appeal to you; research shows most people are born negative.
To give you an idea what we are talking about, here’s what Rajee Kushwaha has to say about negative thinking. He’s not a psychologist, but he developed these ideas from his observation of people during 40 years of military and public service. His comments seem to reflect the same ideas as many people around the world have regarding those in government and corporate leadership positions.
Rajee has proposed three “Laws of Absurdity” which together define what he calls “Extreme Negative Behavior (ENB).” This condition, which is not a mental disorder, causes many normal people to display negative attitudes in almost every relationship situation. People with this state of mind have the word “No” permanently formed on their lips and they will begin to object to whatever another individual says before any conversation is finished, especially if it involves a new concept. Do you know anyone like this? Are you one, yourself?
As defined by this author the three laws are:
Law of Biased Mind
This causes people to act in a manner similar to political parties and their leaders, i.e., they hate all things evil and they perceive the other party to always be evil. It applies to any other relationship meaning such people will tend to have hate on their minds when they deal with others in an unfamiliar situation
Law of Paranoid Mind
This results from a negative world view. People thinking this way believe they are fine, upstanding people, but others are not fine or upstanding. Such a view is held by people like Hitler and his hatred of Jews, or Bin Laden’s hatred of Americans. Many dictators and powerful people around the world display similar characteristics.
Law of Love-Failed MindEvery day all of us are confronted by someone displaying one or another of these characteristics, though not many in the most serious category. The challenge is to overcome the effects of negativity on ourselves, and if there is any way to do it, try to effect changes on those with negative characteristics if they are our employees or in our close group. Outsiders will likely not be affected by any of our efforts.
Mr. Kushwaha defines this stage as similar to someone who says, in their mind, “If the object of my affection can’t be mine, it will never belong to anyone else, I will kill it or otherwise get rid of it.” This is the state of mind of serial killers or terrorists.
What is a positive mental attitude? Here is a good definition by Charlene M. Proctor, Ph.D. She perceives a positive attitude to be the method of training our minds to overcome repeated negative thinking by making constant positive statements to our own minds. Such positive statements may come from our own feelings of well-being, meaning, or purpose in our lives. These ideas of using positive thoughts and seeing success through our own positive attitude have been taught from ancient times by Shamans, religious leaders, and spiritual teachers. They are true today as they have been from the beginning of time. A positive attitude is derived from the process of choosing positive emotions, rather than negative ones, from our environment which contains a multitude of both positive and negative elements. Getting rid of our old negative emotions is a choice we must make, as individuals, and requires continuing effort. How do we build internal mechanisms to accomplish the change to being positive?
The idea of a discipline dealing directly with Positive Psychology was first developed by Dr. Martin Seligman, PhD., in 1998. He attributes his revelation about the subject to his five-year-old daughter who explained to him, after he scolded her, that she had changed her own attitude from whiney to happy in about two years. The result was a new discipline in psychology and the first university curriculum program of its kind at the University of Pennsylvania. The University says Positive Psychology is grounded on the belief people want to live in a meaningful way and enhance all that is best within them.
The University has an Authentic Happiness page. Here you can learn about the new Positive Psychology Center and gain access to Resources and Newsletter Archives dealing with this recent addition to the study of Psychology. At the bottom right sidebar you will find some important books dealing with this fairly new thinking, all of them available from Amazon. From this page you can access an article in the American Psychologist Magazine, July-August 2005, which describes how this new discipline addresses several new questions including “How can we become lastingly happier?” and “How can we reduce suffering?” The hope is to develop psychotherapy from where you go to discuss trouble into a place for talking about individual strengths.
To fully use the Authentic Happiness page you must register on the site. Go ahead, it’s free and takes about a minute. From there you will be able to access a number of questionnaires on various personal psychological situations. Among them are:
- Authentic Happiness Inventory Questionnaire
Measures Overall Happiness
- Optimism Test
Measures Optimism About the Future
- Meaning in Life Questionnaire
Measures Meaningfulness
- Approaches to Happiness Questionnaire
Measures Three Routes to Happiness
Recognizing the importance of being positive to your success, here are some ideas about how to use this concept to actually help you.
First are some ideas from Heather Loewen about “How to Benefit from the Recession." She lists seven things to do when you’re feeling down:
- Walk
- Write
- Sing
- Draw or paint
- Read
- Meditate
- Help someone
More ideas about applying Positive Psychology to your business are discussed in this Business Week article by Jill Hamburg Coplan. When times are rough, as they are now, Positive Psychology, the Science of Happiness, can often disclose opportunities most people will not see. An example is a small business owner who saw his entire business taken away by a competitor he had known for a long time. Rather than getting mad and trying to retaliate in some way, the owner used his personal attributes of optimism and generosity and called the competitor congratulating them on their success, even though it was with two main former customers. The tactic paid off when the competitor got some orders they could not fill and called the former supplier for help. All this resulted in a lot of future business.
This entrepreneur has taken the advice of his positive thinking coach and hires people because of potential strengths rather than the content of resumes. Every meeting he has with employees begins and ends with praise, never any word of criticism. He considers his business to be about cultivating careers and personal goals; all this results in nuts, bolts plastic, and whatever the ultimate products are.
Many businesses are using Positive Psychology coaches who teach that optimism and cheerfulness have a detectable effect on company earnings. They also believe and teach that, like a heart muscle after an attack, positive attitudes can be strengthened over time with constant use. These ideas emanate not only from the father of the curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania, but from older masters like Abraham Maslow and Eric Fromm. Coaches strongly suggest that positive emotion increases creativity and problem-solving ability and aids in fighting stress.
The Positive Psychology coach mentioned in the Business Week article is David J. Pollay of The Momentum Project. Information about training can be found by clicking the Store link in the left sidebar. A list of more coaches is here.
Many psychologists argue that Positive Psychology is not really useful. There are many jobs requiring anything but a positive attitude, they say, like police, emergency personnel, the military and similar occupations. After their jobs are finished, why can’t they resume positive thinking—what they all are doing brings good to someone and must be very satisfying. In addition, according to Jerome Kagan, a Harvard psychology professor, the feeling of happiness may come to some people who had a miserable childhood and are so much better off now. He says up to one-third of humans inherit happiness, but the rest, including up to 15% with inherited negative genes, are simply destined to be mostly unhappy. Professor Kagan further says a suicide bomber becomes extremely happy just before blowing himself up.
All this may be so. In the case of the bomber, it is the result of religious training—he is looking forward to martyrdom and a bunch of eternal virgins. Such a person has every reason to be positive. As for the rest of his thinking, I submit that not even a Harvard professor knows everything. It may be that some people have great difficulty feeling positive about anything. Even if they can be trained to feel more positive, it may not last very long, resulting in a continuing need for retraining. So, what? Any positive response, no matter how difficult to achieve, is worth working to achieve. After all, the happy suicide bomber achieved all the goals for his entire life, didn’t he? Just because some people object to this new Positive Psychology discipline, there is no reason not to use it for personal and business success.
A few illustrations of ways to use Positive Psychology in your business are discussed in a Business Week Magazine Handbook. Here are some ideas:
- For Meetings
Share positive feedback, or ask everyone to share a success story. Research suggests positive emotion and engagement tend boost profits.
- For Performance Reviews
Emphasize a worker’s value rather than a lot of problems. Research positive comments improve performance better than being critical.
- For Hiring
Hire for character rather than skills. This tends to place new employees in positions where they will become emotionally and completely absorbed in their jobs.
- Use of Workshops
Use a short seminar to instill a sense of meaning into the work of employees.
This site includes healing therapy that applies to stress, depression, anxiety, and others. There is also mind power therapy dealing with creativity, intelligence, and more.
Keep an open mind and use the new Positive Psychology techniques to help you and your employees achieve a higher level of success. It is simply impossible to function at the top of your ability if you are gloomy. Being a home-based entrepreneur is never easy—you need all the help you can get including a positive attitude.
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