Positive thinking key to sustainable success
that time of the year again. The Lunar New Year festivities have been celebrated in full swing this week, with amazing displays of fireworks and lion dances.
This year is the Year of the Boar, which is the twelfth of the 12-year cycle of animals in the Chinese zodiac. I am extra excited because I was born in the year.
My excitement led me to look for the musings of Feng Shui masters to see what 2019 has in store for me. Being a “metal-boar”, I was very pleased to read that I can anticipate “unexpected cash flow”.
I am not usually culturally inclined to pay much heed to the Chinese zodiac. But being a Malaysian, I tend to cherry-pick the positives from cultures around me.
It sounds so cliché, but positive thinking has an enormous impact on every part of your life, particularly your career.
While your skillset is vital for progress at work, it is your ability to reframe your thoughts optimistically that plays the pivotal role for you to achieve sustainable success at work.
There are senior managers that I coach, for instance, who struggle with their jobs. They are not incompetent or disengaged. But their struggles are mainly due to working with negative people that carry negative attitudes on a daily basis.
This is a common dilemma for many people in my leadership coaching programme. They feel tremendous stress and more often than not this condition is caused by negative thinking.
Resonating negatively is a common condition afflicting many. I have learnt that negative thoughts make me worry and stress in the most inappropriate ways.
I was in Bangkok, Thailand, conducting a series of leadership-coaching sessions when my father called to inform me that my mother had been hospitalised. I had to get a grip of myself and focus on what I could do for my folks from there. I did what I could and after a couple of days, I got myself back to Penang to be with them.
Apart from being grateful that my mother was out of imminent danger, the most inspiring thing happened when I had a chat with her cardiologist, Dr Rajesh P Shah, at Gleneagles Hospital in Penang.
He explained my mother’s situation quite thoroughly and thankfully he spared us the medical jargon — a sign of a doctor who understands that family members have a limited ability to grasp facts at trying times.
After he explained her condition, the prognosis and the treatment plan, I asked him rather innocently that besides resting, what else my mother should do.
He said she just needed to be positive and be surrounded by people who were positive.
I didn’t expect that, but I was totally overjoyed that my mother was in good hands with Dr Rajesh.
Through my work and my personal experiences, I know that healthy and happy people think about what they want and how to get it, all the time. They develop a positive attitude that truly changes their entire life.
I went right back to my mother’s room and we talked briefly about the treatment plan. Then we started discussing all the interesting new things that will happen when she comes out of the hospital. We talked about how much more time she is going to spend with me and my wife in Kuala Lumpur, and this made her really happy.
As a result, almost instantly her spirits lifted and she looked reenergised.
There was a study on the effects of worries and our ability to perform tasks by Pennsylvania State University. It was cited in the Journal of Clinical Psychology in 1990.
The study revealed that people who were anxious for more than fifty per cent of the time had reduced ability to sort objects, as the difficulty of such tasks increased.
The research demonstrated that the disruption was a result of increased levels of negative thoughts. It appears that when the brain is faced with complex tasks, negative thinking actually hurts its ability to process information and think clearly.
Psychologist and author of the book “Hardwiring Happiness”, Dr Rick Hanson, argues that if you successfully train your mind to replace negative thoughts with positive or constructive ones, you will experience less anxiety and depression.
Just remember that thinking negatively about your problems doesn’t solve anything. It instead makes it harder for you to create any useful solution.
When you learn to look at the silver linings in every situation, you will have greater compassion, love, contentment, joy, gratitude, self-esteem and satisfaction with life, and overall happiness.
Isn’t this what you want at work and in life?
Gong Xi Fa Chai, everyone, and let positivity reign in this year.
Just remember that thinking negatively about your problems doesn’t solve anything. It instead makes it harder for you to create any useful solution.
The writer is managing consultant and executive leadership coach at EQTD Consulting. He is also the author of the national bestseller ‘So, You Want To Get Promoted?’