Positivity at The Office: Because Grumbling Isn't a Team Sport!

At the beginning of the 20th century, an English shoe manufacturer, concerned about the decline in its sales in England, decided to try to open new markets abroad. Its director called two of its salesmen and proposed that they travel to Africa to try to open market to increase their sales.

Both salesmen left by boat for Africa with instructions to make a first survey of the market. Each of them would go to a different country to have two opinions about the potential of the African market.

Within days of arriving, the first salesman called the factory owner, informing him that after several days visiting cities, he had concluded that the African potential for shoe sales was null. "Boss," he said, "here they all go barefoot. No one wears shoes. We are not going to be able to sell a single pair of shoes."

The next day the second of the salesmen called. He was absolutely excited and eager to speak to his boss. "Boss," he said. "It's fantastic. No one here wears shoes. No one sells shoes. We are going to sell thousands of pairs…"

I have a question for you…

Name one successful AND happy person who’s negative.

Chances are you’re struggling to name one. 

That's because research actually shows that positive people are more likely to succeed in business and sports. 

It makes me wonder why some people feel as if positive thinking is just a bunch of fluff.  Or why others say things like 'I'm not being negative, I'm just being realistic'.  Nice try.

Why do some get what they want, and others don't? 80% of success is due to attitude. Not the economy, not the time of year, not an election year or even who happens to be in the White House.  

An optimistic attitude makes us see opportunities in all the difficulties that life holds for us. A pessimistic attitude makes us see difficulties in all the new opportunities that we hold in life. 

 Not buying it? Here’s further proof:

• Positive people sell more: Sales people who scored high on optimism sold 37% more than their pessimistic counterparts. (University of Pennsylvania.)
  
• Positivity contributes to higher success: When people are more positive, they demonstrate better decision making. (Kansas State University)
• Positive moods contribute to working harder toward goals, and learning and capability development. (The University of California Riverside)
  
• Positivity motivates greater health and happiness: Positivity is linked to a reduced risk of mortality and depression, reductions in chronic pain and physical limitations. (University of British Columbia)
• Positive Visualization Decreases Anxiety - In this positive thinking study, in the Journal of Behavior Research and Therapy, researchers from Kings College in London tested 102 subjects diagnosed with anxiety disorder. They asked one group to visualize an image of a positive outcome to each of the three worries they’d had in the past week, another group to think of verbal positive outcomes and the last group to visualize any positive image whenever they started to worry. The two groups that visualized a positive image, whether it related to a specific worry or not reported greater happiness, restfulness and decreased anxiety.
• Study proves that happiness makes you successful rather than success makes you happy - This review, published in the December 2005 issue of Psychological Bulletin, examined studies of over 275,000 people and found that the happiest people owe their success, in part, to their optimism and positive outlook. Dr. Lyubomirsky, head researcher from UC Riverside concluded, “When people feel happy, they tend to feel confident, optimistic and energetic and others find them likeable and sociable. Happy people are thus able to benefit from these perceptions.
• Study that proves that short-term stress strengthens the immune system, but long-term stress ravages the body.  Researchers, led by Dr. Segerstrom at the University of Kentucky, analyzed over 300 separate studies done in the previous 30 years within the psychological community of the effects of stress on humans and concluded that when people face a stressful situation, they get a burst of adrenaline that boosts their immune system and helps them to better deal with the immediate situation. But, over time, if they continue to stress about an event, their immune systems break down, causing illness, depression and anxiety disorder. If you can’t change your situation, change your thinking about it…or else.
• Mental Fitness can help overcome trauma and PTSD.  After several decades of research, The Penn Resilience Program has successfully helped children, college students, and soldiers in the US Army become more resilient to stress and anxiety by increasing their mental fitness. 
• The Nun Study proved that positive thoughts lead to longer life. Researchers from the University of Kentucky examined autobiographies written in 1930 by nuns living together at the same convent between the ages of 18-32 years old. Sixty years later the researchers contacted the surviving nuns, now aged 75-90. Of those that were still alive, half had lived beyond average life expectancy. Of the longest living survivors, all of had them scored high on positive thoughts or feelings about life in their journals written back in 1930, regardless of the circumstances!

I’ve seen the impact that positivity and an open mindset can have over the last 25 years.  I've seen teams continually break records because they instill positivity in their culture and they understand how positive thinking fosters strength and perseverance.  I've also witnessed practices that invest a lot of time in building their skills, but they stagnate because they choose to blame and complain, ultimately surrendering their power. 

So....  How do you change your mindset?

1. Think Possibility. It's not just 'being positive' for the sake of it.  Possibility Thinking is the willingness to see possibilities everywhere instead of limitations. I believe we’re at a time in our culture where we need people who can engage and inspire others to see more than just the problems before us—we need people who see the solutions within the problems.
2. Stop dwelling on the past.  We tend to spend the majority of our time in regret, or over-analyzing what happened yesterday, last week, last month or even last year.  All of the energy spent on the past completely zaps our energy.  Instead, focus on what you WANT to happen in the future.  
3. Take personal responsibility. I was talking with an office manager recently that was in despair at the state of the practice.  New patients were down, production was suffering and morale was at an all-time low.  She continually blamed a past employee for their current state - THIS EMPLOYEE HAD BEEN GONE FOR FOUR MONTHS!   Quit blaming and take back your power to make a difference.
4. Focus on what's going well.  If you're following the agenda/guidelines for your weekly vision sessions and huddles, you have built-in opportunities to talk about what's working in the practice as well as forums for acknowledging fellow team members.  Don't skip this part! There's power in leading with optimism and building a positive culture.  Not only will you develop as a connected and committed team, but you are much more likely to achieves superior results.