Help Yourself by Helping Others
You don’t live in isolation. Every day you come into contact with dozens of people, potentially thousands, in personal conversations or while commuting, shopping, working, or using the Internet. That means every day other people have an opportunity to influence how you think, feel, and respond. They get some input into your day and your outlook. But the converse is true as well. Each day you have the opportunity to influence others through your demeanor, your words, and your actions. Your outlook will have an effect on those around you.
What will be the net effect of your interactions with others? Will they exert negative influence over you, causing you to slip into negative thoughts, negative words, and negative choices? Or will you exercise a greater sway over them, leading them toward a positive chain of thought, speech, and action? Your day will almost certainly not be neutral; either you’ll influence others to think positively, or they’ll influence you in a different direction. That’s why the third arena in which you must make life changes in order to create and maintain a positive attitude is so important. Your relationships can either lift you up or drag you down in your quest for a positive future.
The bottom line is that to keep a positive outlook, you must become a person of influence. You must counter the negative drift of the culture around you by being a lighthouse of positive thought, positive speech, and positive action. As you do this, you’ll both build and safeguard your own positive outlook and help others gain a positive point of view. You’ll become a leader in each of your relational contexts, and you’ll help yourself by helping others.
You may be thinking, Me, a leader? No way! Believe me, I understand how intimidating that may sound. Let me assure you that you can indeed influence the people around you—and that’s really what it means to be a leader. As my good friend John C. Maxwell has said, “You don’t have to be in a high-profile occupation to be a person of influence. In fact, if your life in any way connects with other people, you are an influencer.”1
In this chapter, you’ll learn how to influence people around you to think, speak, and act positively. When we’re finished, you’ll have simple, practical strategies for handling the negative situations and people in your life, even those who seem to drain the positive energy from you by their very presence. Your positive attitude will be like the fragrance of a fine perfume; it will enter the room before you, subtly lifting the spirits of those you encounter.
Leverage the Helper Principle
Do you remember the helper principle? We learned about this in chapter 10. This concept has been documented by a variety of studies. Simply put, the helper principle is that helping other people is essential to helping oneself. So when you help other people overcome their problems, whatever they may be, you gain something in the process. This is part of the genius behind the many 12-step recovery programs. When one person helps another, they both take a step forward.
Personally, I have experienced this many times in my speaking and teaching. I have always found it a bit intimidating to speak on a subject I previously had little experience with. That’s where the helper principle came into play. By explaining a concept to someone else, I find that I always understand it better myself. There’s something about the process of leading another person to grow, overcome a hurdle, or make a life change that instills that same change or discovery in you. When you help others grow, you grow too.
You can leverage the helper principle in your quest to transform your attitude. As you look for opportunities to help others overcome their negative attitudes and habits, you’ll find something magical happening. You’ll become more motivated, more inspired, and more positive in the process!
Right now you may be thinking, Wait a minute, I’m the one who needs help with my attitude. That may be true, but by leading others in positive ways, you will actually boost your own growth even more than theirs. Though you may have trouble envisioning it at this moment, you’ll become known as the most positive person in the room.
To solidify your own positive outlook, help others to rise above negative thinking. There’s nothing else like it for boosting your own outlook. You can do that by applying the techniques I’ll show you in the remainder of this chapter.
Develop a Positivity Bias
On the afternoon of September 11, 2001, in the immediate aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center, Mayor Giuliani and Governor George Pataki held a news conference at the New York City Police Academy on Twenty-Eighth Avenue in Queens. When a reporter asked how many people had been killed in the collapse of the twin towers, Giuliani said, “I don’t think we want to speculate on the number of casualties. The effort now has to be to save as many people as possible.” With the events of 9/11 still unfolding and debris from the fallen towers choking the streets of Manhattan, Giuliani was able to do something truly extraordinary—focus on the positive. Rather than railing against the terrorists or even lamenting the terrible damage inflicted, he lifted people’s sights to see something else, the possibility of saving lives. By ten o’clock that night, so many volunteers had shown up to help at Ground Zero that no more could be accepted.
What Giuliani did in that moment was great leadership, and in hindsight it seems like the obvious thing to do. Most of us, however, when faced with negative circumstances, focus on the negative. In fact, a great many people focus on the negative when faced with positive circumstances. Researchers actually have a name for this phenomenon. It’s called negativity bias. There’s something about human nature that predisposes us to find the flaws, dwell on the problems, and spin things in a negative direction. You’ve probably seen negativity bias in action, either in yourself or in those around you.
One problem with negativity bias is that it gets the ball rolling in the wrong direction. Negative thoughts lead to negative speech, negative actions, and ultimately negative choices. Mayor Giuliani nipped that in the bud. By focusing on the positive possibility of saving lives, he began a positive chain of events. Positive Psychologist Kathryn D. Cramer said this:
When a leader is caught up in negativity bias and is blind to the assets and advantages inherent in a stressful situation, it can trigger a downward spiral. But if, like Giuliani, a leader can see the downsides and the upsides of a traumatic event, danger can be thwarted and progress made.2
To lead others—and yourself—in a positive outlook, develop a positivity bias. Look for the positive in every situation, no matter how bleak. This isn’t merely wishful thinking or ignoring the facts. A positivity bias is a determination to see possibilities where other people see only problems. A positivity bias will lead you to ask how to accomplish something, not whether it can be done. It will cause you to focus on enjoying your last day of vacation rather than being sad that six have already slipped away.
It will drive you to ask questions like these when you face failure or discouraging circumstances:
• What new opportunities does this make possible?
• How can we leverage this downturn to our advantage?
• What can we learn from this setback?
• Who can I learn from in this situation?
• What can I do differently next time?
You’re going to face negative events, circumstances, and people nearly every day. If you can learn to respond to them by looking for the positive, not the negative, you’ll strengthen your own attitude and help those around you lift their sights, refresh their spirits, and reach for something better. Develop a positivity bias. It will make you the leader in every room you’re in.
Encourage Others
I’ve never met a person who didn’t like encouragement; in fact, most people thrive on it. I learned a long time ago that everyone who works for me is a volunteer—because they all have the option of working elsewhere. What makes employees loyal isn’t money or perks; it’s the positive relationships and opportunities they receive. When you encourage others, you lift their spirits, help them avoid a negative focus, and establish yourself as a positive leader wherever you are.
Encouragement has great power. If you reflect for a few moments on your own life, you’ll probably identify a handful of people who’ve had a profound effect on you. Odds are good that those people influenced you with encouragement. You may be thinking of the band instructor who said you had talent, or the coach who made you believe you could make the first team. Perhaps it was a pastor or mentor or parent who affirmed you after a particularly difficult setback or failure. Those encouragers set the tone and course for our lives. They help us believe the best about ourselves and see the best for our future. And you can be that encourager for someone else. At work, at school, in the gym, and above all at home, be the person who says, “Way to go!” or “You can do it,” or “I believe in you.” Those words may seem small, but they’ll be magnified a thousand times in the mind of a person who struggles with a negative self-image or negative thoughts.
Encouraging others is easy to do. Perhaps this doesn’t come as naturally to you as you would like, but offering encouragement is simple and can be learned by anyone. Here are some tips to get you started.
• Encourage those who are trying something difficult by saying, “I know you can do it.”
• Encourage those who’ve suffered loss by saying, “I’m sorry.”
• Encourage those who’ve faced a setback by saying, “I believe in you.”
• Encourage those who are stressed or tired by saying, “Tomorrow is another opportunity.”
• Encourage those who are afraid by saying, “We’re with you.”
• Encourage those who feel like quitting by saying, “You’re almost there!”
Look for opportunities to encourage people every day. Don’t wait for a crisis or calamity. Catch people doing something right, affirm them for who they are, and let them know they’re valued. There’s just one caveat to keep in mind: Always be sincere; never give false praise. People can sense when they’re being patronized. If your encouragement isn’t genuine, it will have the opposite effect from what you intend.
Celebrate and Say Thank You
One of the most dangerous forms of negative outlook is the attitude of entitlement, which leads people to think they deserve every good thing they receive, and much more. An attitude of entitlement puts tension into any relationship. When a husband believes his wife owes him affection and sacrifice, it puts a chill on their relationship. When an employee constantly believes she’s worth more than she’s being paid, her negative attitude will infect every aspect of her work.
You can break the attitude of entitlement in those around you by practicing two simple acts: celebration and thanks. Bring the attitude of gratitude into your relationships by celebrating what’s good and saying thanks for everything you receive.
Celebrate at Every Opportunity
Celebrate good things every chance you get. Celebrate birthdays, work anniversaries, project completions, report cards, holidays, or any achievement, no matter how small. The celebrations don’t have to be lavish; make them in keeping with the event it commemorates. The important thing is to frequently let people around you know that you notice what they’re doing, and you value who they are and the contributions they make.
Celebrations have three benefits in leading others toward a positive outlook. First, they lighten the mood. Everybody feels better when there’s a celebration, even a small one. It’s hard to keep a negative outlook when everyone around you is happy. Second, celebrations affirm others. This takes the focus off you for a while and helps to break your own sense of entitlement. It’s hard to be self-focused when you’re praising someone else. Third, celebrations model the positive outlook that you hope others will adopt. When they see you directing attention away from yourself and toward others, they’ll be more likely to follow suit. You create a culture of generosity toward others, and that’s certain to break the entitlement attitude.
Say Thanks for Everything
The second way to attack the attitude of entitlement in others is to say thank you whenever possible. Say thanks for everything you can think of, and I mean everything. Thank the server for bringing your meal at a restaurant, even though it’s his job. Thank your employer for your paycheck, even if you think it’s less than what you deserve. Thank your spouse for doing housework, even though it’s partly their responsibility. Thank the policeman who gives you a citation for speeding; it may have saved your life! Hand out thank-yous like Halloween candy—everybody gets some.
When you’re generous with giving thanks, you break the culture of entitlement and replace it with a culture of gratitude. You model a positive outlook for others, you demonstrate humility, and you lift the spirits of those around you. Saying thank you is an incredibly simple, easy thing to do, and it has profound effects on a home, a workplace, or any relational context you find yourself in.
Check Negative Speech
If you’re going to live in the world, you’re going to encounter negative people, negative thinking, negative speech, and negative actions. You can’t avoid that, but you can put some limits on it, especially negative speech. You can’t control what anyone else thinks, but in most places where you’re in contact with people, you influence what they say around you. Not entirely, of course. But it’s possible to put some checks on negative speech uttered in your presence.
When I speak of checking negative speech, I don’t mean putting a checkmark by it, as by an item on a list. I’m borrowing a term from ice hockey, where a check is a defensive move aimed at disrupting an opponent who has the puck or separating him from it entirely. There are various types of checks in hockey. There’s the body check, where the defender drives his shoulder into the opponent to push him off the puck. And there’s the hip check, in which a skater drops to a crouch and swings his hips toward the opponent, knocking him off balance. There are 11 types of checks in all, each designed to stop the opponent from holding or obtaining the puck. All of them include a bit of aggression—but they’re all legal when done properly.
You can check negative speech using a variety of techniques that all have the same aim—stop others from voicing their negative attitude around you and others, and turn the conversation toward the positive. Here are the major types of speech checks you can use. Each requires a tiny bit of confrontation, but they’re all perfectly acceptable when done with grace and tact.
Call It
The first technique in countering negative speech in others is calling it out—putting a label on what’s being said. You can do that simply by labeling the speech for what it is, then adding, “I don’t think we should do that.” Here are some examples.
“I think we’re drifting into gossip here, and I don’t think we should do that.”
“Complaining about the boss won’t really solve our problems, so let’s move on.”
“Repeating rumors only makes people worry; let’s leave it alone.”
“I don’t want to become a naysayer; let’s explore the idea further before we decide.”
When you identify negative speech for what it is, it’s likely that the other party will stop or alter their tone. There’s no need to be critical, judgmental, or self-righteous. Simply say, “That sounds negative, and I think we should talk about something else.”
Counter It
One of the best ways to stop negative speech in its tracks is to counter it with something positive. When you hear complaining, naysaying, or gossip, simply respond with an alternative—a more positive view. When you hear someone insult or disparage someone who isn’t present, say something positive about that person. If others start to complain, put your positivity bias to work by pointing out fresh possibilities. If others are naysaying or talking down an idea without giving it a fair hearing, say why you think it just might work. A small fire won’t turn into a blaze if you pour some water on it. And negative speech will not flower when you smother it with praise and possibilities.
Leave It
Sometimes the best way to check negative speech is to leave the presence of the speaker. Some people love to gossip or complain, and there’s simply no stopping them. You can’t turn a dyed-in-the-wool naysayer into a Pollyanna overnight. There are occasions when you simply have to excuse yourself and leave the room in order to stem the tide of negative talk. It may seem rude, but it’s worth it. Listening to a steady stream of complaints for 15 minutes will drain your positive energy quicker than a day of hard labor. If you cannot prevent a negative conversation from harming others, you can at least check its effect upon yourself.
Don’t Listen to the Frogs
I love the story about a group of frogs that were hopping along through the woods when two of them fell into a pit. The other frogs saw how deep the pit was, and they realized there was no hope. They told the two frogs in the pit that they were as good as dead. The two frogs in the pit were positive thinkers though, so they ignored the naysayers and tried to jump out anyway. The frogs up above kept shouting for the other two to quit jumping and accept their fate. After a while, one of the frogs became so discouraged by all the negative talk that he finally lost hope. He quit jumping, slumped down, and died.
The second frog didn’t. He kept jumping, seemingly undeterred by the waves of negativity being showered down upon him. He continued jumping with all his might. The negative crowd renewed their efforts, yelling even louder for him to stop the foolish jumping, and to give up and die. He kept at it though, jumping a little higher with each attempt. Finally, he made it out.
When he got out, the other frogs said, “Why did you keep jumping? Couldn’t you hear us?” It took a few moments for the successful frog to figure out what they were saying. Then he responded, “I’m deaf. All this time, I thought you were encouraging me!”
You’re going to encounter plenty of frogs on your journey to attitude transformation. There’ll be many people who feel intimidated or even threatened by your change to a positive attitude. Remember that misery loves company, and people who are steeped in negative thinking always want someone to join them in complaining, in feeling helpless or entitled, or in trudging along in a negative lifestyle that leads to misery. Some of them may be close to you—members of your family, coworkers, or trusted friends. Don’t listen to them. Don’t for one moment believe that you cannot succeed, that you’ll never rise above your negative circumstances, that your life cannot change, that you’re stuck with a negative outlook forever.
Here’s the truth: You can change! You can become a positive person. You cannot choose what happens to you in life, but you can always choose your response to it. You can make the decision to have a positive outlook. And when you support that with positive changes to your lifestyle—in your thoughts, daily habits, and relationships—you will become a positive, forward thinking, optimistic, successful person.