In both life and business, we all tend to experience difficult times. Equally, there are days where it just works. Close your eyes and imagine Tiger Woods hitting a drive right down the fairway. Woods makes what he does look too easy; in reality, it is anything but.
Everyone struggles at times. It does not matter whether you are a professional golfer or a business executive. David MacKenzie writing for golfstateofmind.com says all of us “… have the power to change the story” and not let our failings master us. The idea is to choose to be positive and persevere, hold on to your dreams, and believe that you can realize them. Whatever happens, do not let negativity creep in to your game plan.
So what happens when we let negativity in?
By clinging to the spider’s web of negativity, your preconceptions follow a negative direction, decreasing your chances of success. The difficulties magnify and seem to be more overwhelming.
The fact is if you want to be successful at anything, the two things you need are hard work and a positive mindset.
How do positive and negative outlooks affect a person’s cognition?
A positive outlook broadens the mind enabling you to see a multitude of options, whereas the opposing force of negativity puts a blockage in your thought processes.
The following are three positive pathways that lead to business success.
Pathway 1: How positivity leads to positive emotions and levels of productivity
There is empirical proof that positivity leads to positive emotions and higher levels of productivity. Researchers have found a powerful connection between a positive mindset and a person’s level of engagement and productivity.
Among the great examples of this research is from Jessica Pryce-Jones, the CEO of iOpener and author of Happiness at Work. Pryce-Jones surveyed 3,000 participants from 79 countries. She wanted to know if happiness influenced productivity. She found that “participants that claimed they were happy 180% more energized at work, 108% more engaged, 50% more motivated, and 50% more productive.”
Other studies show that a positive mindset allows the person to see significantly more solutions than when stuck in the quicksand of negativity.
Positive Psychologist researcher, Barbara Fredrickson studies five groups of participants. The clips shown to the first two groups generated positive emotions such as joy and contentment. The last two groups saw clips that evoked negative emotions such as frustration and anger. The third group was the control group. Fredrickson then asked the two groups questions. The first two groups came up with significantly more solutions than the last two cohorts did.
Pathway 2: How positivity can lead to a better pathway to improved health and business success
As much as a positive mindset correlates with productivity and positive emotions, it also influences our physical health. Researchers found that people with a positive outlook have reduced cardiovascular problems, and experience fewer issues with depression.
One study published in the Health Behavior and Policy Review evaluated physical health and optimism levels of over 5,000 adults, aged 52-84. Results demonstrated that adults with a higher level of optimism were twice more likely to have sound cardiovascular health. Blood sugar and cholesterol levels also reflected similar findings.
Researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found an optimistic outlook leads to a longer life (cited from Forbes.com article The New Rules for the Power of Positive Thinking by Henry Devries https://www.forbes.com/sites/henrydevries/2018/09/28/the-new-rules-for-the-power-of-positive-thinking/#54e867225369)
University of Pennsylvania professor Martin Seligman has done extensive research in the areas of positivity and health. Seligman found depression was more common in people that negatively attributed their failures to a personal flaw when compared to optimists who saw failures as a valuable learning experience.
Pathway 3: How a positive attitude can lead to business success
The attitude that we have about ourselves can have a powerful impact on how successful we are or how hopeless we feel. The gear that toggles both of these extremes is our locus (platform) of control. According to leadership and emotional intelligence expert Paul Nyamuda, the direction of our locus control is down to us “making a simple decision” to take ownership of our happiness without allowing the intervention of external forces.
Husband and wife team, Cathy and Gary Hawk, experts in positive energy argue on similar lines to Paul Nyamuda that all of us have a choice:
We can walk into work feeling grumpy or harried or we can choose walk in fully engaged mode ready to meet the challenges ahead. Cathy Hawk adds that it is a well-established fact… “That energy that you send out into the world is the energy you attract from the world”.
A variety of research shows there is a strong relationship between positive attitude and success. Dr. Martin Seligman studied different sales agents from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. He showed a clear correlation between employees’ mindset and sales performance.
Seligman first scored Metropolitan Life Insurance Salespeople level of optimism and compared it with their performance. He found the top performing sales agents scoring highly on the optimism test sold 37% more than the pessimistic sales agents did. In addition to this, Seligman found that those sales agents that scored in the top 10% for optimism “made 88% more sales than those in the most pessimistic 10%”.
Choosing positivity leads to our business success!
To succeed in business and take responsibility for our victories and loses takes courage especially when faced by challenges in our careers. It is easy to fall into a negative mindset where we blame others or other causes without looking first at ourselves.
The pathways described above show how positivity is better for not only our mental health, but also our physical wellbeing. Positive people tend to live longer and have fewer health issues. They also are more productive, more energetic, and happier people, of course, that leads to more business success too.
As Cathy and Garry Hawk and others, show is it is down to a simple decision. We have the power to choose to fall into the mire with a negative mindset or to climb up and over obstacles directed by our optimistic GPS.
by Jonathan Gordon