Can positivity make you successful?
Stanford University did a study that examined the impact of positive thinking on students’ learning abilities. They found that “the hippocampus, a brain area linked with memory and learning, was significantly more active in kids with a positive attitude.”
So is there more to positive thinking than we realize?
Let’s be honest. Life is ugly at times, and it isn’t all flowers and rainbows, so why pretend it’s not? It’s much more beneficial to be a realist, right?
As it turns out, positive thinking is overwhelmingly influential when it comes to succeeding in your career and in life. Check out these studies:
Psychologist Michael F. Scheier, who has researched and published papers on the power of optimism as far back as 1985, said:
“I think it’s now safe to say that optimism is clearly associated with better psychological health, as seen through lower levels of depressed mood, anxiety, and general distress, when facing difficult life circumstances, including situations involving recovery from illness and disease.”
A researcher named Martin Seligman studied insurance salespeople and found that “optimistic salespeople sold 37% more policies than pessimists, who were twice as likely to leave the company during their first year of employment.”
Economists at the University of Warwick found that happiness led to a 12% spike in productivity.
Other research found that people who engaged positively and provided social support — people who picked up the slack for others, invited coworkers to lunch, and organized office activities — were not only 10 times more likely to be engaged at work than those who kept to themselves; they were also 40% more likely to get a promotion.
To explain why optimists are better at business than pessimists, I think Scheier summed it up best when he said:
“We know why optimists do better than pessimists (…) they’re problem solvers who try to improve the situation.”
But positive thinking seems to have more benefits than just in the work environment.
Researchers from Dartmouth and the University of Michigan found that “pessimists’ health deteriorated far more rapidly as they aged.”
Research from University of Kentucky psychology professor Suzanne Segerstrom found that when injected with a virus, students who became more optimistic showed stronger cell-mediated immunity. In other words, optimism led to a stronger immune response.
Okay, that’s a lot of data. It’s clear that positive thinking leads to success – in more than one area of life.
But is it possible for someone who defaults to negative thinking to become naturally optimistic?
Here are a few ways to keep you from being negative:
1. Practice gratitude.
It’s really difficult to be negative when you consistently direct your thoughts to things to be grateful for. And as Dr. Rick Hansen teaches in his book Hardwiring Happiness, practicing gratitude can literally retrain the way your brain processes information.
No matter who you are or where you are in life, you have something to be grateful for. Get in the habit of reflecting regularly on these things and keeping them front-of-mind. This creates neural pathways that make positivity an easier path to default to in difficult times.
2. Create space.
When you’re in a situation and you start to feel negativity creeping in, delay your reaction for a moment or two. Breathe. Nod your head, smile, whatever it takes to buy time, just don’t speak immediately. Your initial reaction will almost certainly be negative until you train your brain to think differently, so just let it pass.
3. Test-drive your thoughts.
Once you’ve paused to let the initial reaction pass, imagine what a positive response would sound like in this situation. You don’t need to say it immediately, just get comfortable with the idea of visualizing positivity. Once you get into the habit of visualizing a healthy response, you’re one step closer to choosing a healthier response.
4. Categorize your thoughts.
Thoughts are like pieces of paper. We have to decide to either keep them or discard them. If we don’t decide what to do with them, they’ll linger in an uncategorized state for us to deal with later.
There’s been some interesting research around the power of taking action to categorize your thoughts. One study found that when people commit to doing something with their thoughts – such as writing thoughts down and throwing them away or typing them out and dragging them into a trash folder, they’re less likely to make use of those thoughts later.
The study’s co-author Richard Petty of Ohio State University said, “However you tag your thoughts — as trash or as worthy of protection — seems to make a difference in how you use those thoughts.”
The key factor in the study, however, was that the thoughts couldn’t simply be visualized as gone. There had to be a moment of commitment to the representations of those thoughts being removed, at least temporarily.
While it might not make sense to write your thoughts on paper, you can take a moment and write out the draft of that nasty email then delete it; write the angry text message draft, then trash it; or just do some venting speech-to-text style into your notes app on your phone while you take a walk, then swipe it into the trash when you’re done.
This might sound revolutionary, but it’s not. It’s simply a tool to help you take time to slow down and sort through your thoughts in an otherwise hectic world. Once you do this, it makes it easier for you to see what’s worth keeping and what’s not.
If you’re caught in a moment and you’re not sure if a thought is worth wrestling with, consider what it would accomplish if you let it go.
Allow yourself to visualize the outcome of the thought if it were to play out to its end. If it isn’t likely to be helpful, discard it.
Doing this practice of sorting and discarding thoughts will help you more easily illuminate the kinds of thoughts you don’t want to cultivate in your character rather than letting them slip in unguarded in an emotional moment.
The truth is, this is tough at first. You’re not going to be able to push negativity completely out of your mind, so simply start by becoming more aware of it. Face it head on then ask yourself, “If I say what I’m thinking, what would be the result? What would it accomplish? Would anyone be better for it? Would it in any way whatsoever help this situation?” If the answer is no, then throw it out.
Based on all the research, you’ll thank yourself for this later.
Problem Solvers > Pessimists
The better thing to do, and what successful people tend to do, is find a more mutually helpful perspective and go into problem-solving mode.
You’re frustrated? Great. Take it out on the problem instead of complaining about it. You’ll be infinitely better off for it, and people will actually enjoy being around you.
And since opportunities and encouragement come from people, then the more people like being around you, the more resources and opportunities will come your way (as Andy Andrews says).
Here’s the bottom line:
If you’ve convinced yourself that being a “realist” is okay, and that poking holes in every idea or situation you come across is somehow a good thing, or that becoming abrasive in uncomfortable situations is normal or “understandable,” think again. You’re only hurting yourself, both in your career and in life.
Because, as it turns out, whether we like it or not, positive people become successful people.