In my first 18 years in the working world, I can say that I hadn’t developed much self-awareness or self-mastery, and when I faced difficult challenges, I wasn’t sure how to proceed. I’d see all around me a great deal that seemed negative— how people spoke to each other, how managers “led” their teams, the way feedback was delivered, how bad news was shared, and more. I was curious as to how I could potentially shift negativity to positivity, but didn’t know how.
Two decades later, I became a marriage and family therapist and then studied leadership and personal growth strategies, becoming a career and leadership coach. Through that work, I’ve researched for over a decade what makes some people highly successful interpersonally and in business, and why others fail to generate the positive outcomes they want and their organizations need.
Interestingly, there are have been many studies over the years about how positive thinking and positivity overall can have beneficial impact on many aspects of our lives. According to the Mayo Clinic, for instance, positive thinking and optimism can provide critical beneficial impact, including:
- Increased life span
- Lower rates of depression
- Lower levels of distress and pain
- Greater resistance to illnesses
- Better psychological and physical well-being
- Better cardiovascular health and reduced risk of death from cardiovascular disease and stroke
- Reduced risk of death from cancer, respiratory conditions, and infections
- Better coping skills during hardships and times of stress
In working with over 20,000 professionals across 6 continents, I’ve observed that being more positive in our behaviors and language paves the way for far greater success, satisfaction and reward in our lives (and this goes for our partnerships, marriage and family, and personal life as well).
Positive thinking can have wide-ranging physical and emotional impact. For example, a report from Johns Hopkins Medicine states, “people with a family history of heart disease who also had a positive outlook were one-third less likely to have a heart attack or other cardiovascular event within five to 25 years than those with a more negative outlook.”
In Partnership As In Life and Work
During my training as a therapist back in the early 2000s, I read a fascinating book called The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. In it, the author, relationship expert Dr. John Gottman, explains that there are particular types of negative interactions that, if allowed to run rampant, are so detrimental to a relationship that he calls them the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. These four horsemen “clip-clop into the heart of a marriage in the following order : criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling.”
These are the exact same harbingers of professional conflict, crisis and disaster in the workplace as well. Allowed to run unfettered, these “four horsemen” can certainly clip-clop into the heart of your career and professional life with a deadly thud.
Gottman discovered a formula he found provable and reliable—that to make your partnership/marriage successful, you must ensure that there are five times more positive, loving interactions than negative, painful interactions between you and your partner. If you don’t adhere to this formula, serious unhappiness ensues. And if you dip toward the 1:1 ratio consistently, his research showed that you’re likely to end in divorce. He shares that he can watch a couple discuss a problem or conflict for only a few minutes, and predict with eerie accuracy if they’ll eventually end in divorce.
I’ve seen the relevance of this positive-to-negative interaction formula in people’s careers and professional behavior and endeavors as well. Those who are consistently more negative than positive in their communications and interactions (and in their mindsets) often suffer from serious professional setbacks and challenges, blocking them from reaching their highest potential.
Why is Negativity So Destructive?
Negativity limits, constrains and tears down. It puts up walls rather than paves the way for opportunity and innovation. Negativity also tends to spread and escalate, and as it does, it strips away future opportunities for success, self-esteem, trust, confidence, and growth.
What Does Positivity Do Instead?
Being positive, on the other hand, has the opposite effect—it builds, repairs, and protects. Using positive language and behaviors develops support structures and creates new roads to solutions and success. It also paves the way for a deeper level of human connection, compassion, and belonging.
In fact, concentrating one’s focus on being more positive as we engage in our professional endeavors achieves the following 10 powerful outcomes:
Being More Positive:
- Helps you engage with others more effectively and gain support more readily for your ideas and initiatives
- Develops you as a role model and someone to “watch,” admire and learn from
- Gives you greater positive impact and influence on your culture, your environment and your colleagues (positive language and emotion are magnets)
- Boosts your “immunity” to negative occurrences—you can become more resilient and bounce back quicker
- Inspires others around you to find the courage to seek—and move toward— more open-minded and uplifting approaches
- Strengthens your ability to advocate effectively for yourself and others, which in turn generates more opportunity
- Paves the way for more collaborative success rather than crushing competition
- Builds your reputation as someone worthy of trust and support
- Helps you see possibility where others see hopelessness
- Allows you to recognize and leverage your talents and achievements rather than dwelling on your failures
In the end, positivity paves the way for growth, and growth breeds success and impact.
Here’s a tip to help you look at your life and the world around you in a different way. In working with clients dealing with some of the hardest human experiences one can imagine, I’ve seen that we can change, shift and grow even when what’s around us seems relentlessly difficult.
It’s about adopting a commitment to evolving.
We are able to shift ourselves away from negative, destructive and limiting negative patterns to more positive ones—in our relationships and in our work. We can address and close our power and confidence gaps so we can rise to a higher, healthier and more rewarding level, despite the obstacles. But it doesn’t just happen. It takes what I call three critical steps – a positive reframe, internal exploration and external, brave action, most likely very different from what you’ve chronically done before.
As A Start, Here’s A Suggested Exercise For This Week
Tip: Take a close look at your communications and interactions at work and at home for the next 7 days. Try to track the ratio of your positive communications to negative ones, in your language and behavior? (Focus only on you first; later you can do this assessment of others in your life and work). But this exercise is critical to help you understand you more deeply.
If the ratio of your communications is at least 5 (positive) to 1 (negative), kudos to you. If not, there’s some important work to be done.
Kathy Caprino is a career and leadership coach, author of The Most Powerful You, and trainer helping clients build confidence and positive impact.
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