Not sure about you, but sometimes I catch myself in a less than positive mindset. I sometimes catch myself nitpicking, feeling anxious, focusing on what might not be quite right. At that point I can get a bit annoyed with myself. Next, usually, I start asking myself questions about what got me to that place so I can find other ways of looking at things and pull out of that mindset!
The question I often go to is “What’s good about ‘that’?” Imagine if that is the question you asked more often than anything else. Imagine that you were actually curious about that question and not asking it because someone wrote an article saying it was a good thing to do!
We all know we can do better. We all know we make mistakes from time to time. We all know we can find something that was done incorrectly or didn’t quite get the results we wanted. Staying in this frame of mind tends to feed on itself and reinforce itself. And, at work, a culture that stays in this place creates a difficult work environment. At home it can create a space that doesn’t feel “safe” or accepting.
We are generally not as good at finding, “what’s good about something as finding what’s wrong with something?”. It feels more difficult and sometimes it is more difficult to find what’s good. Why? I think it’s because it takes practice to shift our mindset and find something good - most of us have likely been trained to find what’s wrong more often than not. And this might be why we don’t do it as often as finding what’s wrong.
What if we could train ourselves to find what’s good in more things and in others, more often?
I can tell you that changing your outlook, even a little, will have a large impact. When you are able to find what’s good about something and share your observations with another person (especially if you often share what’s wrong), you build them up; you allow them to relax; you build trust with them; you relax a bit because it feels good; you get more comfortable with that person’s work and your brain chemistry even changes.
Give it a try. Put some effort into finding what’s good over the next week, and see how it goes! See what reactions you get and how things change around and for you! Then share it back here. I’d love to hear how it goes!