The Power of Being Positive

Welcome to Leaders Lift - a podcast for aspiring and existing leaders!

I'm your host, Greg Cunningham and I look forward to being a part of your leadership journey.

Thank you for tuning in for another Shorts episode.

Be Positive

Today, I just want to talk about the power of being positive. Even though it's not directly related to the first few episodes, this one is so powerful that I wanted you to have it early on.

We have so much negativity in our lives today. If you take in any sort of news (broadcast, podcast, youtube, social medai, news apps, etc.) the ratio of positive to negative is going to be way out of whack.

Our brains are actually trained to look for the negative things. Our brains are hard wired to look for threats and the to either run or fight (think fight or flight response). Let me give you a personal example:

I spent a decade or so in charge of emergency response for various church organizations. A good portion of that time was while I lived in Houston. We had to plan for all kinds of emergencies there including but not limited to hurricanes, flooding, chemical spills, etc. The time I spent working on emergency response plans just enhanced the way my brain tried to look for and identify every worst case scenario and plan to mitigate it. As I result, I tend to see a lot of things as negatives. That is not a good thing.

If you can relate to this then I have a suggestion for you. I have learned this at church but also from a TED Talk by Shawn Achor (link in the show notes) and in his books on happiness

Here is the action to take (and you can start this today)

-Do something to help yourself look for the positives in life. Some people use a gratitude journal others like to send positive messages to other people and others find a way to put them in positive situations that gets them away from all the negativity. I've gone on a social media fast to help temper that negative influence. I also try and spend as much time outside in nature as possible (eventually I'll be recording episodes from campgrounds).

Anything you can do to re-train your brain (read Shawn's books to learn more) to consciously take notice of the positives in life will help you to be more positive. That it so important to leading. No matter your skills, motives or anything else, if you can't find a way to be generally positive about life, it's going to be rough for you and for those you lead.