Mental well-being at home - Positivity

Positivity isn’t just a vague term, it’s to do with something that is grounded, that’s realistic and has an outlook that enables you to focus your energy. There are three principles to positivity: avoiding traps, realistic optimism and energy steerage.

First principle is Avoiding Traps. What I mean by traps, is all-or-nothing thinking, it’s discounting the positives. All the little mental pitfalls that we fall into. We need to do a little internal audit and understand what drives those so we can overcome them.

Second principle is Realistic Optimism. Now this not about blind hope. We’re not standing in the garden and saying there are no weeds, there are no weeds. We’re actively pulling them up to have the best chance of our garden being beautiful.

Third principle is Energy Steerage. This has a lot to do with the mindset- energy steerage is about where you choose to move your focus. Are you going to focus on the petty squabble with your work colleague or are you going to move your focus to having an excellent work day and being able to smash your targets?

A helpful exercise you can do to remember and practice these three principles is to try and identify those Thought Traps that you have. This is about replacing the self-talk. ‘I got this wrong because I always screw up’, with something like ‘On this occasion I got it wrong. What can I learn to make this a positive experience?’

The book that showed me how to do this is the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I highly recommend this book, it will help to reframe a lot of your mindset with positivity.

Success can be found in the grey area. That’s were collaboration comes in and I think the more we can collaborate, the more we can succeed. Especially in a market that’s challenging at the moment due to the current Coronavirus crisis.

This blog is part of a series about Mental well-being at home. You can view the entire playlist on YouTube, listen via Soundcloud or read the other entries by navigating below.

Working from home - Confidence - Mindset - Positivity - Versatility - Endurance - Mastery