[MUSIC] Here's some action steps to reflect and write. List your inner circle of people you ask for support. List ways you can show appreciation or give back to your inner circle. List at least 3 individuals you'd like to get to know better. List some steps that you can take to develop a relationship with each person. Check into some new clubs, networks, or community events that you could get involved in to meet interesting people. Put the event on your calendar. Predict the changes that will occur as a result of your actions. Describe the person that you'll be becoming, maintaining a positive, optimistic attitude. What do we mean by positivity in a person? You can spot a positive optimistic person by their responses to everyday situations. They typically show up like this. Habitually look at the bright side. Regularly experienced emotions such as joy, hope, gratitude, serenity, exploration, and discovery. They gratefully accept the world as it is. Essentially, positivity is a matter of choosing, even in the most challenging situations, to create light instead of darkness. Optimism is a product of positivity. Is a mental attitude that reflects a belief, or hope, that the outcome of some specific endeavor or outcomes in general will be positive, favorable, and desirable. Positivity and optimism are powerful attitudes. Well they originate in the individual, they can lift everyone that person touches. They are human entitlements. Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist and Auschwitz survivor explains why. Between a stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response, lies our growth and our freedom. The last of human freedoms is to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances. Why is positivity important in the workplace? Thousands of moments everyday, according to Nobel Prize winning scientist Daniel Kahneman, we experienced approximately 20,000 individual moments in a waking day. Each moment lasts a few seconds. If you consider any strong memory, positive or negative, you'll notice that the imagery in your mind is actually defined by your recollection of a precise point in time. And rarely does a neutral encounter stay in your mind. The memorable moments are almost always positive or negative. In some cases, a single encounter can change your life forever. Ultimately you decide whether a moment is positive or negative. Here are just some of the reasons to choose a light over dark. Here's the benefits of positivity. Positive people live longer. Positive work environments outperform negative work environments. Positive leaders are able to make better decisions under pressure. Marriages are much more likely to succeed when the couple experiences a 5:1 ratio of positive to negative interactions. Whereas when the ratio approaches 1:1, marriages are more likely to end in divorce. Positive people who regularly express positive emotions are more resilient when facing stress, challenges, and adversity. Positive people are able to maintain a broader perspective and see the bigger picture, which helps them identify solutions. Whereas negative people maintain a narrower perspective and tend to focus on problems. Positive people have more friends, which is a key factor of happiness and longevity. There is a cost to negativity. 90% of doctor visits are stress related according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A study found that negative employees can scare off every customer they speak with for good. At work, too many negative interactions compared to positive interactions can decrease the productivity of a team. One negative person can create a miserable office environment for everyone else. Negative emotions increase the risk of heart attack and stroke. Negativity is associated with greater stress, less energy, and more pain. Negative people have fewer friends. So how much positivity is enough? 5 positive interactions to every 1 negative interaction is ideal. 3 to 1 significantly increases positivity. And 13 to 1 is the upper limit. There is such a thing as being too positive. It's important not to ignore negativity and weakness. Positivity must be grounded in reality. While we choose to look at challenging situations from a positive perspective, our positivity really needs to be grounded in reality. Look, it's mostly productive to see the positive and to be upbeat, but hiding behind rose colored glasses isn't always the best idea. Sweeping real issues under the rug instead of dealing with them doesn't improve our adaptability and resilience. Building our adaptability resilience means working through challenges and having the confidence that we can thrive under most circumstances. And we see things for how they are and choose to move through them with a positive outlook and attitude. When those challenges get more difficult and we experience those moments of panic, where we become emotionally hijacked. And our best adaptability resilience seems to be out of reach. Here's a simple exercise developed by Mark Gholston in his book. Just listen.
