Little Things That Matter

Learn From The Past, Live The Present and Have An Open Mind to Face Tomorrow

How To Have A POSITIVE ATTITUDE

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The Gym TRX class starts at 11am on Sunday and two people walk in at 11:15 and their body language was such that they didn’t even look apologetic for being late. Despite being told that they are late and they can’t enter the class, they stomp in, ignoring the instructor’s request.

Eric who has just taken over as the Asia-Pacific sales head for his company, tells the new intern in his team that he has to get Eric’s breakfast sharp at 8 am daily.

If I can’t get that, you can’t get that too! This was Sylvia’s inner thought that was dictating the attitude that she was showing her friend who was looking bewildered.

It has been said that people don’t care how much we know until they know how much we care. Click To Tweet. This indicates the importance of demonstrating a respectful and caring attitude. Be it in sales or in any role, your credibility can be established by how much you know and your accomplishments but what finally allows your reputation to be built is having the right attitude. Click To Tweet

⇒How does bad attitude look and sound ? 

Disrupting Your Negative Thoughts

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Image Credits : Lalita Raman

Jacinta has sent her proposal to her boss. She has worked over the weekend on this proposal making sure all the details had been covered and that there is no room for any errors. On Monday late morning she gets a call from her boss asking her to come over to his office. She goes in with a heavy heart. She observes her boss reading her proposal as she is entering his room. He finishes reading the report and gives it back to Jacinta stating, ‘Jacinta, your proposal is good, though I would like you to refine these two sections. The client meeting is in an hour and please make sure you have it ready much before that’.

Jacinta is disappointed and she feels she should have done better. She thinks that her boss is not going to like her coming to the client meeting. She feels that her boss won’t trust her with any such important projects in the future. She knows that he has lost confidence in her. She is so lost in this negative mindset that she fails to attend to another task with her heart and soul. She in fact loses a deal with another key client and this gets her into a further negative vicious cycle.

Clearly, Jacinta has blown the situation way out of proportion. Her negative monologue has turned a suggestion for improvement to an extremely disruptive thought process.

Have you seen people with similar behaviors? How about you? Would you have reacted the same or differently?

Thinking affects our feelings and in turn our beliefs and actions. Click To Tweet

What are these thinking traps?

1. Magnifying – you magnify the issue. You minimize your own strengths and your ability to believe in yourself of rendering a task or job. You magnify it to an extent where even some of the future events become certainties in your mind. In Jacinta’s case, her negative mindset has made her conclude that her boss will not trust her with any important projects in future.

2. Blanket generalization – you think that just because an unpleasant thing has happened before, it will always happen. Let’s say you miss the bus when you are in a hurry to get to your client’s office. You believe that this will happen to you every time you need to get somewhere urgently.

3. Perfectionist and “all or nothing thinking “– you set high standards for yourself and others. When you hear suggestions for improvement you see it as, you are not good enough and you could not render a simple task well. You start telling yourself you should have checked the report or your work again or should have written it better. Jacinta failed to see her boss’s remark as a suggestion to improve few sections. Her negative inner talk started to tell her what she should have done so that her proposal would have been accepted without the necessity of any refinements.

4. Jumping to Conclusions: you conclude negatively despite no evidence to support your belief. In Jacinta’s case, she believes that she is going to be told by her boss not to attend the meeting with the client. The fact is he hasn’t stated so nor has she clarified nor is there any evidence that he doesn’t want her to attend the meeting with the client.

How do you avoid falling prey to your negative thinking? Click To Tweet

1. Track Your Inner Dialog – Keep a journal of your thoughts when something doesn’t go as per your expectations. How do you react to this stressful situation? What were the consequences of your reaction to that situation? What beliefs did you form and how did it affect your thinking and behavior thereafter?

2. Analyze Results – Once you have written down several such daily activities and how you behaved, ask yourself and observe if there were any repeated patterns in the way you think and act. Which of these beliefs or behavior have led to specific consequences that made things worse?

3.Distractor – You have seen how your negative thinking affects your behavior and actions. How do you interrupt your negative thoughts? It is unlikely that telling yourself to snap out of the negative thoughts will work effectively.

A positive distraction like walking away from what you are doing or concentrating on your achievements in the past in challenging situations or talking to somebody who can inspire you is what you need at that moment. Even asking yourself How Dare I allows you to snap out of your negative thoughts?

Disrupting your negative thoughts allows your brain to snap out of the stress and negativity and thus helps you to think clearly.

Surround yourself with positive people who can inspire, encourage and believe in you to bring back your self-confidence. Click To Tweet.

Once you snap out of the negativity, ask yourself

– What happened?
- what did you do well?
- what could you do better?
- if a suggestion has been given by someone else like your boss, is there an element of truth to that?
- is the feedback destructive or constructive? If destructive, why bother? If constructive what can you do better? What lessons did you learn?

You need to look for ways that will help you stay committed to your goals and evaluate:

–Are you a product of your negativity? Click To Tweet


-How can you grow through your challenges and yet keep up the optimism? Click To Tweet

If you shroud yourself with negativity most of the time, and keep giving credence to your inner critique, you may consult a coach or mentor who will assist you in overcoming your negativity. Overall you need to believe in yourself and your strengths.

For Coaching, Speaking or Training let’s connect.

Are You An Ode To Your Dogmas?

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We are more than a decade into the twenty-first century and yet we live by dogmas…….

Beliefs rule our work and personal world. Beliefs are more often than not a lie. Beliefs lead us to act or think about something in a way not because we have experienced it but because it is just believed to be true.  Beliefs are not necessarily based on logic. Each of us have our belief system and some of them are acquired along the journey of life or some that is ingrained into us from childhood. Most of them we choose not to question.

I grew up in India, and some of the common beliefs are

– if the husband dies soon after marriage, the wife has brought the bad luck
– widow needs to wear white
– if you are good you will go to heaven when you die
– a marriage is all about compromises
– if a particular dish is cooked in a specific way and this is a family tradition it is carried out from generation to generation without anyone asking why is it done the way it is done & is it necessary?
– crying is bad and makes you weak. Controlling your feelings makes you strong
– when a black cat crosses the road whilst you are walking it is a bad omen

In an organizational context beliefs can take the following shape

  • to join us as a coach or as a leadership trainer, you need to be trained by us. It doesn’t matter if you have been certified.
  • this is the only way to service a customer efficiently and it has worked for us for several years.
  • we will continue to service our existing customers with our existing products and there is no necessity to look at growing our range of products and services we offer to them.

Many of us become so intertwined with our beliefs that we practice it as a behavior & impose it on others. Beliefs are created by some data or knowledge that may have been gathered or gained without actually experiencing it or questioning the logic of the information.

Only when we separate our lives from beliefs and start living based on our own experiences, we start to be in control of our true journey of life.

Impact of beliefs

1. Fear – most people don’t want to question because they Fear that they will be excluded or thought of as unconventional. If I ask questions on their adopted practices, I cut my career progression.  In a larger context, if organizations refuse to break away from their conventional thinking they run the risk of not adapting. They short change themselves from creative thinking, growth, and development.

 2. Happiness – many of us for a large part our lives define success and well-being in terms of the external world. We live in this myth that our happiness is linked to the materialistic world. We continue to seek peace of mind from the external world.

Have you questioned if that gives you peace of mind, happiness and fulfillment?  Have you tried going on an inner journey?

3. Thoughts – Our thoughts reflect in our feelings and our actions. If we refuse to relinquish our deep-seated beliefs, they become our thoughts. These thoughts control us, dictate our actions and define who we are.

Would you like to be known by your beliefs or would you like to live your experiences?

Would you like to limit your potential by these beliefs?

 Let your fear, thoughts or dogmas not restrict your innate potential. Ask relevant questions

  • Have you asked yourself why is something done the way it is done?
  • What is stopping me from getting what I need?
  • Would you rather be part of a group who question, challenge and help you grow rather than agreeing with you on everything you say and do?
  • Are you a product of your beliefs?
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