The Power of Positivity
One of my biggest pet peeves is when someone says, “don’t worry, everything is going to be okay.” It comes across as an insult to my intelligence. Usually, the person saying it has no clue what you’re going through. While the sentiment is supposed to be helpful, it’s cringeworthy. I can’t simply shut off my inner “chicken little” and groove to Bob Marley’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” without some rational reason. Sometimes it’s hard to focus on the positive when positivity seems like nothing more than wishful thinking.
Did you know that the real obstacle to positivity is our brains? We are hard-wired to look for and focus on threats. It’s an important trait for staying alive. This survival mechanism served was very useful when we were hunters and gatherers, living each day with the legitimate possibility of being killed by someone or something in our immediate surroundings. Thankfully, that was a very long time ago.
Today, this survival mechanism translates to pessimism and negativity as the mind tends to wander until it finds a threat.
When the threat is real and lurking in a creepy dark alley, this mechanism serves you well.
When you imagine a threat and you spend weeks convinced that your project is going to be a disaster, this mechanism leaves you with a terrible view of reality that can ruin your life and make you feel stuck.
A lot of focus is needed to maintain positivity. Sometimes, it can be a daily challenge. Now that you know that your brain is hardwired to focus on threats, so you must be intentional about staying positive. It won’t happen if you put it on autopilot.
The guru of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, studied the connection between positivity and performance. In one of his studies, he measured the degree that insurance salespeople were optimistic or pessimistic in their work. Optimistic salespeople sold 37 percent more policies than pessimists. What was also interesting is that the pessimists were twice as likely to leave the company during their first year of employment.
Pessimism isn’t just bad for your career, it’s also bad for your health. Numerous studies have shown that optimists are physically and psychologically healthier than pessimists. Seligman worked with researchers from Dartmouth and the University of Michigan on a study that followed people from age 25 to 65 to see how their levels of pessimism or optimism influenced their overall health. The researchers found that pessimists’ health deteriorated far more rapidly as they aged.