Being positive
Developing a can-do attitude that makes things happen
Mike Clayton
Objectives
By the end of this ebook, you will be able to put in place the habits that will give you a can-do attitude. Not only will this allow you to make things happen, but it will also give you a more attractive personality. People like positivity.
Overview
Employers want positive, self-motivated people, who know that they can get things done and make things happen. In this ebook, you will find how positive attitude can be broken down into specific habits, which you can work on one at a time.
And you don’t have to wait for all of these to become ingrained habits: each one will contribute to your sense of self-confidence, and help you to be someone who gets results. And as you build them up, one by one, you will feel an increasing belief in your ability to make a difference and be recognised as a valuable contributor to your organisation.
The seven habits are:
- PEP
- Planning
- Persistence
- Purpose
- Proactivity
- Progress
- People
Context
The world of work is full of talented, able people, and you are just one of them. So what will mark you out as different... special? At any level of skill and technical ability, it is that something extra that sets some people above the rest. It isn’t a marginal degree of ability; it is about your attitude.
And in a work environment where every last cent needs to get counted, your ability to make things happen, and the extent to which your bosses and colleagues feel confident in you, is what will make that difference. So you need to come across as motivated, enthusiastic, and positive about every assignment they need from you.
This ebook is designed to show you the right habits to cultivate, and how to break them down into simple chunks.
Challenge
Changing your attitude is down to you. No one can do it for you and it is even tricky to try to give a formula. It is not like developing a skill, where following a set process correctly, and doing it enough times, will almost guarantee success.
So this ebook doesn’t offer you a series of steps; the sequence isn’t important. What you will get is seven habits to change. The bad news is that breaking old, unhelpful habits is hard. The good news though, is that consistently practising new habits can embed them quite quickly. The simpler and easier they are, the faster they will become part of you.
To be fair with you, these aren’t all easy. But then, little of real value in life ever is. So work on each of them, one at a time, in an order that suits you.
Habits of a can-do attitude
Our seven habits can each be broken down into smaller, easier habits to build. So this ebook creates a system of 21 habits. You may already have some of them, and some will come easier than others. But if you work your way through all 21, you will find a tremendous sense of energy and empowerment. And it won’t be just you who notices it.
These seven big habits, and their 21 smaller components, are set out below. This is the order in which you’ll encounter them, if you read through from front to back. But the order doesn’t matter. Take them in any order you like.
- PEP. Passion, energy, and poise
- Planning. Goal-setting, self-assessment, and your next steps
- Persistence. Handling setbacks, keeping going, and making choices
- Purpose. Motivation, pleasure from work, and reading other people’s purpose
- Proactivity. Making choices, optimism, and focusing on the right things
- Progress. It’s not you, growth mindset, and adaptability
- People. Relationships, give and get, and relationship building
PEP
Pep is an old-fashioned sounding word that ought to be used more. In means energy, confidence, and vigour. I’ll give it a new coat of paint and redefine it as PEP: Passion, Energy, and Poise.
Passion
Charismatic and highly motivated people are often driven by one thing in particular. It is something they care about, with great passion and commitment. The word ‘passion’ is perhaps over-used in the world of modern business, usually meaning a belief in your organisation’s products or service. It is a kind of password to show we have the commitment it takes to get ourselves promoted. But a genuine deep enthusiasm for something that matters to you will automatically change how you act, and how you are perceived.
PRACTICAL TIPS
What do you care about?
There are three ways to find your passion in life.
- You know it already:
What is that thing that you cannot not care about? The thing that matters to you most of all, which is the source of fulfilment, joy, and sometimes grief. (Passion is about depth of emotion and caring) - Discover it naturally:
If you don’t know it already, start noticing your response to different things in your life. What excites your enthusiasm or drives your anger? When you notice something that makes you want to get more involved, to learn and do more about it, you’ve found you passion. - Go looking for it:
Sometimes, you haven’t found your passion, because it isn’t present in your life at all. In this case, you need to go looking for it by deliberately exposing yourself to completely new experiences – almost certainly in areas you haven’t ever explored. A checklist would be as big as the planet, but some examples of where to look include:- Travel, anthropology, languages
- Music, drama, performance
- Sport, dance, martial arts, exercise
- Community, politics, charities
- Learning, science, history, philosophy
- Art, craft, design, making stuff
- Conservation, natural history, environmentalism
When you have found your passion, pursue it to the extent that gives you the right balance in your life. For some, this is a 100 per cent commitment to one narrow thing. For others, it is about embedding two or three interests into a family and working life. Whatever route you take, your passion will create positivity all be itself, and that in turn will generate a charisma that draws people towards your enthusiasm.
Energy
You don’t need a book to tell you that it’s hard to be positive when you are tired, run-down, and sluggish. So creating the conditions to be energetic is an essential habit to build if you want to be positive.
Four things will contribute to a feeling of energy, and you can easily build them onto a regular routine, so that they start to take care of themselves.
Sleep is the first. Without enough sleep, your mental powers become dim, so create a routine for getting enough – but not too much sleep. Each of us is different, so the important thing is to find out the level of sleep that allows you to get up refreshed every morning and consistently feel sharp and alert through your whole day. Don’t be fooled into thinking that staying up late every night will boost your productivity. For that, an occasional late-night extra work shift can help: chronic lack of sleep will rob you of your energy, rational thinking, and effectiveness.
Exercise is second. Regular exercise allows your body to shift its metabolism and build reserves of capacity. If exercise is a part of your passion, you’ll get this habit for free. If it is not, you’ll need to discipline yourself. In this case find a reasonably high intensity exercise routine that takes little time, or build exercise into your routine naturally, with something like a brisk daily two-mile walk as part of your commute.
Note: if you are going to start any intense exercise routine, always take professional advice, and if you have any health or weight issues, seek medical advice too.
Third is personal hygiene. Yes, after exercise, please do shower! But let’s set aside the social aspect for a moment. Most people find that when they take care of their personal hygiene, and put a little effort into their appearance and grooming, they feel better for it. It is surprising how energising a hot shower or bath can be.
Fourth is nutrition. If your morning routine starts with getting up enthusiastically from a refreshing sleep, and is followed by some exercise and a shower, then you’ll need a good breakfast too. The quality and timing of the food you eat can have a huge impact on your energy levels. A proper breakfast will charge you up for the day, and careful choice of what you eat during the day will improve your energy levels and your health.
Poise
How you stand and move can give or rob you of energy. Practitioners of Yoga, Tai Chi, Pilates, Alexander Technique, and many other systems have been teaching this for hundreds of years. Once again, one of these may be your passion. If it isn’t then there are some simple techniques that can improve your poise and physical posture.
The first is to notice your posture from time to time. As you do, imagine your head has a string attached to the very top (like a puppet) and then imagine that there is a gentle pull on that string. Allow your head to rise and pull your back straight. Do this from time to time as you are standing, walking and sitting, and notice the difference in how you feel, and how people seem to see you.
The second tip is to boost your confidence levels and posture with two-minute Power Poses. This is a term coined by researchers Amy Cuddy, Dana Carney, and Andy Yap. They have identified that standing or siting for one minute each in two exaggerated dominance postures is enough to shift the hormonal balance of your body to leave you more confident and assertive, and enhance people’s perception of your abilities in the period afterwards. So, before an important meeting, presentation, or conversation, spend a couple of minutes in the cloakroom and try out two of these poses.
- Stand, legs apart, hands on hips, and head up
- Stand, leaning forward on a counter, arms and legs splayed, looking up
- Sit, leaning back, hands behind head with elbows out, and legs stretched out
- Sit upright, hands on hips, and legs apart.
ASSESS YOURSELF
How positive are you in the habit area of PEP?
Score yourself on a scale of 1 to 5 on each of the three sub-areas.
Score 1 if you are barely positive at all, up to 5 if you are already super energised with positivity.
- Passion
- Energy
- Poise
Red Zone: If you score between 1 and 6, this is a top priority area for you.
Amber Zone: If you score 7 to 11, this is a mid priority.
Green Zone: If you score 12 to 15, you’re already doing well in this area, and it can wait for a tune-up when all seven habit areas are in the green.
Planning
A can-do attitude ideally needs to flow from genuine confidence that you know what you are doing, and this takes planning. We’ll look at three habits that will get you there.
Set your goals
Having long- and short-range goals will help energise you. The challenge is that goal-setting can take anything from an hour to a month. If you are fairly clear what your goals will be, then setting aside that hour will be enough. On the other hand, you may need to start by letting your goals bubble away quietly in your head, before you settle down to discover them.
Each night, ask yourself what goals you want, and each morning, after you wake up, but before you are fully into your day’s routine, sit for five minutes and write down anything that comes to mind about your goals. When you are ready, after a week or a month, take the time to review these thoughts and articulate your goals.
Then take each one and stretch it a little. Make it more inspiring, a bit more outrageous, and perhaps a little uncomfortable. Then get a piece of card and write your IOU – inspiring, outrageous, and uncomfortable – goal on the card, to keep with you.
Assess your potential
It is no use making a plan if you don’t know where you are starting from, so another useful habit is to periodically reflect on your capabilities and what you will need for the future. Draw a large box and split it into four sections. Label these: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. This is a SWOT analysis.
Start with an assessment of what you are good at and what you are not so good at: your strengths and weaknesses. Try to be as honest with yourself as you can, because false modesty or arrogance will do you no good. Then look to the future. What are the threats or opportunities that you need to prepare yourself for. PESTLE analysis is a good approach to finding these pressures and trends.
PESTLE stands for Political (think workplace politics rather than the stuff on the news), Economic (think about all financial pressures), Social (the changes in society), Technology (new technologies that can affect you and your work), Legislative (think about rules, laws and regulations), and Environmental (what’s going on around you).
Use your SWOT analysis to help make choices about developing yourself to be ready to take up new opportunities, and to select assignments and opportunities that allow you to deploy and build upon your strengths.
Next steps
The best plans are focused on achieving a small number of important things. They link to your goals and, indeed, your passion. A To Do list is not a plan; it is just a list of things that could go into a plan. Start your plan by asking yourself what are the most important outcomes you could create in the next three months? Select no more than five, and fewer if your outcomes are bigger, more complex, or of greater value.
Your plan needs to set out the steps along the way to achieving each outcome. Put them in sequence, estimate how long each one will take, and then schedule the work. Check that you can reasonably achieve the outcomes you want with the time available. If you cannot, you are simply setting yourself up to fail, and would be better choosing fewer outcomes, or giving yourself more time.
Then think about what skills and knowledge you need to gather, and who are the people you will need to call on for help. Also think about the things you will need and how you will access them. Finally, think about what might go wrong, and what you can do to either minimise the risks, or handle them if they happen.
ASSESS YOURSELF
How positive are you in the habit area of planning?
Score yourself on a scale of 1 to 5 on each of the three sub-areas.
Score 1 if you are barely positive at all, up to 5 if you are already super energised with positivity.
- Setting your goals
- Assessing yourself
- Planning next steps
Red Zone: If you score between 1 and 6, this is a top priority area for you.
Amber Zone: If you score 7 to 11, this is a mid priority.
Green Zone: If you score 12 to 15, you’re already doing well in this area, and it can wait for a tune-up when all seven habit areas are in the green.
Persistence
One thing leads to success at school for children from all walks of life and all levels of academic aptitude: the determination to succeed, even in the face of failure. As an adult, your ability to persevere despite setbacks is not just a way to make things happen; it is also an appealing character trait that other people will value.
Failure and success
The first habit to create if you want to build resilience is to start seeing failure as a necessary step on the way to success. If you want to make a sale, you often need first to deal with objections. If you want to find a customer, you must often be turned down by a dozen prospects. If you want to create something, you must first make a series of mistakes, and if you want to learn something, you may need to go through a phase of getting it wrong.
Your eventual success is rarely a result of how quickly you make progress, but more often down to how you respond when you go backwards. And the best response you can have to failure is curiosity: ask yourself ‘What can I learn from my experience?’
In this sense, failure is nothing more than a chance to learn what doesn’t work. So the secret to succeeding is not:
If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again.
If you are going to learn from failure, the rule must instead be:
If at first you don’t succeed, try something different.
So, if something doesn’t go your way, the most important habit to get into is to learn from your experience and then resolutely have another go. Keep trying new approaches until either you succeed, or you conclude that your objective needs a re-think.
Powerhouse loop
Once you have the habit of bouncing back when you hit problems, the next habit to create is one of constant review. Mike Clayton’s Powerhouse Loop is the secret to success in most things.
- Identify what you want to create, the problem you need to solve, or the decision you want to make.
- Analyse the situation to understand what is going on, what options you have, and how these options are likely to play out.
- Plan your next move, by deciding what you will do and how you will do it.
- Take determined action to make change happen.
Then return to the start of the loop and identify what has happened as a result of your action. Analyse what that is telling you and what you can learn from your action, so you can plan your next step and take more action. This constant cycle of learning, planning, doing, and reviewing will lead you to success far more often than not, as long as you apply intelligent persistence.
If all you do is keep doing what you have been doing; you will almost certainly keep getting the same results. That’s not intelligent. If, however, you continually adapt your approach to what you are discovering; that is intelligent persistence.
Making choices
Some of us find making decisions difficult, and the commonest reason is fear that we will get it wrong. The mindset that often drives this is a desire to make the best possible choice. If there are many things to choose from (which digital camera to buy) or the outcome of our choice is hard to predict (which project to get involved in), then finding the best possible choice might barely be possible.
A better option is what is called ‘satisficing’. This is finding something ‘good enough’ to satisfy the most important criteria, and not worrying that there may be some alternative that is just a little bit better.
Satisficing allows you to move forward positively and confidently, by knowing your choice is good, and not caring whether it is perfect. You will focus on what you gain by making the choice, rather than on what you could lose, by not making a different choice.
PRACTICAL TIPS
The decision making process:
- Decide what success will look like. Set objectives for what you want, with a short list of criteria for ‘good enough’, or ‘done’.
- Accept that there may be many ‘right choices’, but that you only need to find one of them.
- Draw up a shortlist of options that best appear to meet your needs, by satisfying your essential criteria.
- Look at each choice and find the main benefits of each. Also look at the main drawbacks of each option.
- Evaluate each option against your objectives or criteria.
- How do the results of your evaluation feel to you?
- Embrace one option totally: say ‘YES’ to that, and put the others into the ‘NO’ pile.
ASSESS YOURSELF
How positive are you in the habit area of persistence?
Score yourself on a scale of 1 to 5 on each of the three sub-areas.
Score 1 if you are barely positive at all, up to 5 if you are already super energised with positivity.
- Embracing failure
- Following the Powerhouse Loop
- Making choices
Red Zone: If you score between 1 and 6, this is a top priority area for you.
Amber Zone: If you score 7 to 11, this is a mid priority.
Green Zone: If you score 12 to 15, you’re already doing well in this area, and it can wait for a tune-up when all seven habit areas are in the green.
Purpose
A positive, can-do attitude is often driven by a sense of purpose. It can also be frustrated when you put too much emphasis on reading other people’s intentions – especially when you misread them. Indeed, since we cannot truly read each others’ minds, we more often than not assume the people around us have a purpose that hasn’t even crossed their minds. Then, of course, we make choices based on faulty mind reading and, unsurprisingly, set ourselves up for disappointment, failure, and frustration.
The number one motivator
The most important motivator is the feeling that there is a good reason for doing what we need to do. If you want to motivate me to do something, find something I already want to do. If you can give me no good reason for doing something, I may well comply out of duty, loyalty, or fear; but never out of enthusiasm.
So find the meaning and purpose behind everything you take on. Relate it back to your passion and your goals. When you can see how each task or assignment will help you with these, then those tasks and assignments become motivating in themselves.
You may have heard the story of the visitor to a town, who sees three men working on a building site. The first man looks miserable. ‘What are you doing?’ the visitor asks. ‘I am splitting bricks into bats (half or three-quarter lengths)’ he replies. The next worker looks determined, so the visitor asks the same question. ‘I am splitting bricks to build a wall’ he replies. The third man looks happy in his work. To the same question, he replies: ‘I am splitting bricks that will form the wall of a wonderful new library.’
Knowing why you are doing something is important; so always figure it out. The most powerful question we ask is ‘Why?’ and the answer to this always starts with ‘Because’. Controlling your ‘because’ will help you control your motivation and enthusiasm.
The pleasure of work
It is one thing to know what something is for, and yet another to be keen and enthusiastic about doing some of the necessary things that are, in truth, dull and repetitive. So wouldn’t it be great if you could transform even these things into a pleasure?
The solution to this is in the concept of ‘flow’. This is the sensation you get when you are so totally engrossed in doing something that you barely notice the passing of time. The only thing you are aware of is what you are doing. You don’t feel hunger or desire for anything else. You are totally content.
Of course, this usually happens when we are working on things we love: our passions, hobbies, or perhaps our most interesting work. But when you understand the three conditions that get you into these flow states, then you can create those conditions around any activity. So, even the most tedious things can be flow state tasks, and give you pleasure.
PRACTICAL TIPS
How to get into a flow state:
Step 1: Be clear about what you are trying to achieve. Set yourself a goal and describe to yourself what success will look like, so you know when to keep going, and when to stop. For maximum motivation, link your goal to something important and worthwhile to you.
Step 2: Make sure that the target you set yourself will stretch you to the limit of your capabilities. If the task is straightforward and undemanding, stretch yourself by setting extraordinary quality standards, or perhaps set out to do it as quickly as possible, without compromising quality or making mistakes. By making the task hard in this way you will force yourself to focus on it closely, rather than slip into cruise control and find yourself daydreaming and getting bored.
Step 3: Pay close attention to what you are doing, as you are doing it. Divide your task into steps and evaluate the progress and quality of your work, as you go along. At every point, ask yourself how well you are doing it and what you can do to improve the quality or the efficiency of your work.
Reading purpose in other people
The trouble with purpose is that we know other people have their own motivations too. But you tend to misread those intentions and ascribe a purpose that says more about you and your concerns than it does about them and theirs.
It is all too easy to interpret a meaning to someone else’s actions that they really don’t have. This can then create a snowball effect of forming unreliable opinions about people. You hear yourself saying in your head things like:
‘When she says that, what she really means is...’
‘When he does that, it’s because...’
And, you even find yourself ascribing meaning to random events: ‘When that happens, it means...’
Internal dialogue like this can be very destructive. It robs you of a sense that you are in control of your results and your emotions. Instead, it places control with other people and gives blame to them or to external events. Regardless of the true causes or meanings (which you often cannot know), your best strategy is to focus on your own choices. Assume the best, or maybe neutral, motivations in the people around you and do what is right anyway.
If you’re tempted to think they treat you poorly because they don’t like you, be nice to them anyway. If you think they don’t trust you, be trustworthy anyway. If you believe they think you are incompetent, just do a good job. You cannot know what people really think, far less control it. Being positive means knowing what you think, and taking control of your actions.
ASSESS YOURSELF
How positive are you in the habit area of purpose?
Score yourself on a scale of 1 to 5 on each of the three sub-areas.
Score 1 if you are barely positive at all, up to 5 if you are already super energised with positivity.
- Understanding meaning
- Taking pleasure from your work
- Not reading meaning into other people’s actions
Red Zone: If you score between 1 and 6, this is a top priority area for you.
Amber Zone: If you score 7 to 11, this is a mid priority.
Green Zone: If you score 12 to 15, you’re already doing well in this area, and it can wait for a tune-up when all seven habit areas are in the green.
Proactivity
If you want something to change; get on and take action.
The word proactive has crept into common language in the last 30 years as an opposite to reactive. What could be a better symbol of a positive, can-do attitude?
It is a habit in itself, forcing the hand of fate and seizing control of events. But there is more to it than that, so let’s look at three specific habits that contribute to being proactive.
The choices you make
Being proactive is not so much a choice, as the inevitable outcome of certain other choices that you can make. These choices amount to being the agent that causes change, rather than the passive recipient (winner or loser) of that change. In uncertain times (and let’s face it, it may be a cliché, but these are uncertain times), you can choose to let stuff happen around you and rely on hope to deliver a fair result, or you can fight for the outcomes you want.
Here are some examples of the choices that are open to you:
- Want versus do. On the one hand you can go around wanting something, and even hoping it will happen or you will get it. The positive alternative is to take action and do something that you believe will help bring it about. It may not; in which case, stay on the Powerhouse Loop, figure out why not, find a new approach, and take more action.
- Escape from your difficulties versus confront and overcome. Both of these can be proactive choices and each can have risks. The reactive choice will rarely get you the result you want, which is to hide from your difficulties: keep your head down and hope they will pass. They usually will, but the problem is timing and how much damage you will incur on the way.
- Get by with what you have versus improve things and make them better. Do you put up with the leaky tap or, do you get online, find some instructions, borrow tools from your neighbour, and get on and fix it? Do you moan every time the door squeaks or need to wiggle the key to get the lock to work, or do you buy a can of oil and make it better? A simple action can make your world a little better. Get in the habit of taking these actions and you will never need to put up with minor hassles. It will take effort and may cost some money, but you’ll feel so much more in control.
Learned optimism
Glass half full: glass half empty. It’s the same thing, and no amount of faith that things will get better will influence the world. That kind of optimism is a delusion.
What is not a delusion is to know that you can have an effect on the world. You cannot make everything right or get all that you want, but you can do something and get results. That is the kind of optimism that we can learn. It contrasts with learned helplessness – the feeling that nothing you do can ever make any difference. So people with this attitude do nothing, change nothing, get nothing.
There is a little system in your brain (the reticular activating system (RAS), since you ask) that is really good at spotting things that are relevant to you. So if you know what you want, your RAS is primed to scan your environment for anything that is relevant. It is kind of like an opportunity-detecting sixth sense. It accounts for that feeling of serendipity, when you spot just what you want, at just the right time.
So tune-up your RAS and prime your opportunity antennae. Act as if you can make a difference and choose to do things with the intention to make things better. Nobody can promise you it will always work, but if you do nothing, and accept helplessness, than that is what you will get.
Where to focus
Intelligent persistence is different to ‘banging your head against a brick wall persistence’. And so, intelligent optimism is different to ‘thinking you can change world all on your own’ optimism. There are some things in the world, in your workplace organisation, and in your family and community that you cannot change. And when you recognise what they are, the best thing is to not even worry about them.
If they are unacceptable to you, take a different action, and get out while you can. If you can tolerate them, then focus your energy and actions on the things you can change. Who knows, when you have made some smaller changes, the things that were once outside your control may come within your influence. But worrying about the many things you cannot control is a simple route to stress, frustration, and misery.
The other area of focus to concentrate on if you want to stay positive is ‘the good stuff’. Particularly when things are going badly, it is easy to notice what’s wrong: mistakes, problems, and people letting you down. When you do this, it is easy to feel jaded or worse. So make a conscious choice, every day, to spend a little time just noticing what is good in your life, what has gone well, and what you are grateful for. Some people might call this counting your blessings, but in a secular context, a lot of recent research has shown the positive benefit of being aware of everything you can be thankful for.
ASSESS YOURSELF
How positive are you in the habit area of productivity?
Score yourself on a scale of 1 to 5 on each of the three sub-areas.
Score 1 if you are barely positive at all, up to 5 if you are already super energised with positivity.
- Making positive choices
- Being optimistic
- Focusing on the positive
Red Zone: If you score between 1 and 6, this is a top priority area for you.
Amber Zone: If you score 7 to 11, this is a mid priority.
Green Zone: If you score 12 to 15, you’re already doing well in this area, and it can wait for a tune-up when all seven habit areas are in the green.
Progress
At the heart of a positive, can-do attitude is a well-founded confidence in your own abilities, and in your capacity to improve those abilities and make progress day-by-day and year-on-year. Confidence is not arrogance when it is based on a careful assessment of your strengths and weaknesses. Instead, it is a strong foundation to build higher levels of skill, knowledge, and ability upon. It is also a great resource to draw upon in times of trouble and hardship, giving you the will to be positive and making you a more attractive personality, to other people.
It’s not you
When things go wrong, one of the most common things you will hear from people who do not have a positive attitude is: ‘it’s me’. Negatively minded people have a tendency to blame themselves for their problems, yet not take fair credit when things do go well. So you will hear them say things like: ‘I’m not lucky’, ‘It’s all my fault’, or even ‘I’m rubbish’.
Let’s take a look at each of these in turn, and see instead what a positive mindset would lead you to believe.
Make your luck. Positive people know that the harder they work, and the more they prepare for events, the luckier they get. This is not because preparedness makes things turn out well, but because it gives you the mental capacity to do what you need to do and still have resources left over to respond to problems, spot opportunities, and take advantage of them.
Is it really your fault? Let’s be honest: it sometimes will be. But before you ascribe fault, look at the evidence of what actually happened. Better still don’t look for fault. Blame rarely if ever makes anything better. The positive approach is to fix the situation, then look for the causes of the problem, so that you can sort out any residual issues, before taking the experience away with you and learning from it. Who cares if it is your fault? In the long run, what matters is the final outcome.
You are not rubbish. I haven’t met you. I don’t know you. But one thing I can say about you with absolute certainty is ‘You are not rubbish’. You have resources you can call on, friends who will help you, skills you can deploy, knowledge you can dip into. You have intelligence, experience, and some measure of health. All that adds up to something worth having: rather a lot, actually.
Growth mindset
People with a negative attitude often have what researcher Carol Dweck calls a ‘fixed mindset’. They believe that what they have is all they ever can have. The knowledge they have is fixed, their intelligence is limited, they are talented or they are not, and nothing they do can or will improve or diminish their situation. If they have talent, they don’t need to work hard (that’s for other people) and if they don’t have talent, then there is no point in working hard.
A positive attitude more often goes with what Dweck calls a ‘growth mindset’. They believe that their innate capabilities are nothing more than a starting point. You can enhance any of your fundamental abilities by hard work, dedication, practice, and learning from your experiences: success and failure. With a growth mindset, you will embrace challenges, be persistent even when you meet setbacks, and take failures and criticisms as valuable feedback from which you can learn.
To harness your growth mindset, cultivate a love of learning and take any opportunity to develop your skills and expertise. This way, you will keep evolving and growing as an individual, throughout your life.
Adaptability
If two people are in the same situation and they want the same thing, then the one who is more adaptable in their thinking is likely to find the solution first; the one who is most flexible in their behaviour will probably get what they want; and the one who is most resourceful in their response to change will feel that they are in control.
An adaptable attitude is most likely to help you to persevere and grow. Some would say this conflicts with advice to create a plan and work to that plan. After all, a plan will give you a sense of control. The reconciliation of these two sound pieces of advice – to plan, and to be adaptable – is in the recognition that the real world won’t respect your plan and events will soon render it out of date.
The correct response is the Powerhouse Loop: as soon as you sense your action is not having the right effect, identity what is going on, analyse it so you can understand it, and adapt to the new situation with a new plan, and different action.
ASSESS YOURSELF
How positive are you in the habit area of progress?
Score yourself on a scale of 1 to 5 on each of the three sub-areas.
Score 1 if you are barely positive at all, up to 5 if you are already super energised with positivity.
- Not blaming yourself
- Growth mindset
- Adaptability
Red Zone: If you score between 1 and 6, this is a top priority area for you.
Amber Zone: If you score 7 to 11, this is a mid priority.
Green Zone: If you score 12 to 15, you’re already doing well in this area, and it can wait for a tune-up when all seven habit areas are in the green.
People
The people around you and your relationships with them are an important component of your success formula. A positive attitude to colleagues, clients, suppliers, collaborators, and partners will be big contributor to being productive and resilient.
The importance of relationships
The different attitudes we can have to the people around us can be likened to three different attempts to make a fried egg.
The first fried egg looks perfect. The yolk is in the dead centre, with the white arrayed all around it. It looks great, but if you see yourself as the centre of everything it will be easy to find yourself becoming arrogant, aloof, self-centred, and therefore resented. No one likes people who see themselves as perfect.
The second fried egg is much like the first, except the yolk is not quite in the middle – it is closer to one side than the other. It is in among the white, but not trying quite so hard to dominate it. This represents a good attitude to relationships – you are a part of the wider group: not apart from it. But you don’t see yourself as someone special, right in the centre.
The third fried egg goes horribly wrong. The yolk and the white separate from one another completely and what you have is a fried yolk and a fried white. There is no communication between them and the yolk is all-alone. That’s no good.
The author far prefers scrambled egg – with egg white and yolk deeply intermixed.
What you give is what you get
There are some mean, unpleasant, cheating people in the world. But most of us are good and decent. A positive attitude means expecting that decency and, in general, you will get what you look for. The golden rule is, of course, to treat others as you would like them to treat you. And this is the way most people are wired: to reciprocate and act fairly. Consequently, what you give is nearly always what you get. Indeed, sometimes what you get in return is better than what you gave.
Act generously and what you will find is that your generosity will, eventually, pay off. It is a little like investment. You make payments in and get nothing out in the early stages. But after a while you start to notice that your credit grows and you start to see real and valuable returns. We sometimes speak of a ‘reciprocation economy’. You give small gifts, do favours, and grant concessions. In return, you will build relationships that will return these favours in the longer term.
Positive people recognise that even asking for help or advice is a gift: you are showing trust and confidence in someone. If you ask me for advice, I will be flattered. So the return you get from asking for help is often just what you need: help. And when you ask for advice, you will nearly always get it.
The third important give and get is fairness and integrity. If you always act with fairness in mind and treat people honestly and openly, what you will get in return is the trust of the people you deal with. This will create a reputation that you will value and will open up opportunities.
Strategic relationship building
Just like financial capital, ‘social capital’ needs to be built up and nurtured. Make a positive choice to do this in a structured way, and you will be able to grow your network of valuable relationships throughout your career.
PRACTICAL TIPS
Four steps to a valuable network of relationships:
Step 1: Understand the existing network of relationships in your organisation and across the other organisations that you work with. Learn about who has the power and where the strong links of trust and influence are. But don’t just aim to cultivate relationships with the powerful people – at the start of your career this can be all but impossible anyway. Focus on people near your level and junior to you. As they rise through their careers you will increasingly find yourself connected to important people.
Step 2: Make yourself attractive to other people. People will like you if you are pleasant, optimistic, and helpful. People also like people who are like them, or who are like they want to be. Familiarity is also a great way to become liked, as we trust the people we feel we have known for a long time. Finally, be the person who makes people feel good about themselves, by offering sincere compliments and genuine praise.
Step 3: Build a reputation around your passion and your biggest skills. It takes time to craft a good reputation because, as Henry Ford pointed out, ‘You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.’ So knuckle down and get some genuine achievements under your belt.
Step 4: Build alliances one by one. Start to do favours and then work together, all the time strengthening the level of trust between you. Once you have that trust, you will be able to extend that alliance to other people to whom your ally will now feel confident in recommending you.
ASSESS YOURSELF
How positive are you in the habit area of people?
Score yourself on a scale of 1 to 5 on each of the three sub-areas.
Score 1 if you are barely positive at all, up to 5 if you are already super energised with positivity.
- The value of relationships
- Giving to get
- Building your strategic relationship network
Red Zone: If you score between 1 and 6, this is a top priority area for you.
Amber Zone: If you score 7 to 11, this is a mid priority.
Green Zone: If you score 12 to 15, you’re already doing well in this area, and it can wait for a tune-up when all seven habit areas are in the green.
Success
The secret to success in being positive is simple to state: embrace what happens and decide to make the very best of it. The reality is that changing your habitual attitudes will take a lot of effort. So do it one bit at a time and notice the effect it is having on the people around you and the way they react to you.
Checklist
- What is your passion? How close are you to being able to talk about it (with passion) to anyone who takes a genuine interest? Click here to review.
- What is your routine to maintain high levels of energy throughout your day? Click here to review.
- How much of a positive physical impact do you have on people around you? Click here to review.
- What are your goals? Have you written your IOU (Inspiring, Outrageous, and Uncomfortable Goals) on a card yet? Click here to review.
- What are the most important three things you learned from doing your personal SWOT analysis? Click here to review.
- How adept are you at planning out the things you need to do? Click here to review.
- How do you view failure? Click here to review.
- It can take a while to ingrain the Powerhouse Loop into your day-to-day thinking. For the moment, can you remember the four stages around the cycle? Click here to review.
- How often do you find your decision making stuck because you want the very best? And to what extent are you prepared to ‘satisfice’ instead? One hundred per cent satisficing may not be appropriate for you, but what is the right percentage for you? Click here to review.
- Thinking about the work you do day-to-day, and the assignments you have at the moment, how clear are you about why you are doing each of them? Click here to review.
- How effectively are you able to turn mundane and trivial (but necessary) tasks into flow state activities? Click here to review.
- When someone says or does something that feels uncomfortable, how well are you able to set aside your instinct to assign a meaning to what they said or did, and focus on a respectful and resourceful response? Click here to review.
- To what extent are the choices you make positive and optimistic? Click here to review.
- Have you tuned your mental antennae to look out for the opportunities that will take you towards what you want in life? Click here to review.
- When things are tough, how well can you focus on the good things? Click here to review.
- It’s not you. But how good are you at telling yourself that, and really believing it? Click here to review.
- A growth mindset leads you to constantly learn and develop. What have you learned and which skills have you grown, in the last month? Click here to review.
- When things aren’t going the way you hoped, how easily can you adapt yourself, to find a new approach? Click here to review.
- Good working relationships are bound to be important to you. But to what extent do you act that way? How much work do you put into relationship building and maintenance? Click here to review.
- How much investment have you made in your own reciprocation economy in the last month? Click here to review.
- Do you have a strategic plan for building up your network of valuable relationships? Click here to review.