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Reports : Motivation - Seeing the Good Side

Well if that doesn't trigger your Spam filter, what will? Thanks to Peter Rogan of Future Positive Consulting Ltd for this article taken from his March eZine

Depriving ourselves of the satisfaction we’ve earned?

"This month a couple of things happened on my travels", writes Peter, "that underlined how, as hard-working and conscientious people we can often make life unnecessarily difficult for ourselves and for those around us".

"We get up and work hard each day every week. We reach the end of each day and week and somehow we end up thinking about all the stuff that went wrong and all the stuff we didn’t get through".

"Many of us don’t seem to enjoy the sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that our efforts have deserved. This can lead us to get up the next day with a more weary and heavy edge that might otherwise have been the case, robbing us of a little of the energy and enthusiasm we could do with to deal with the challenges and opportunities of the day ahead. And we can get caught in that loop. It can become a habit without us really noticing".

Peter relates a story of one of his clients who, "the harder he worked, he reckoned, the less satisfied he felt". "The less satisfied he felt the more tired he felt, and the more tired he felt the more downbeat and prickly he was. Doing snippy, negative, critical stuff came a bit easier and there didn’t seem to be enough time or energy to do the positive stuff. As a manager he realised that many of his team were also doing this for themselves, and he was adding to it by his behaviour toward them and the example he was setting. So, he reckoned it was time to think again".

Peter questions whether his client had "Got it back to front"?

Peter concludes that he had, as did his client who having recognised this, came up with two important insights.

Peter notes that his client recognised that "it wasn’t the hard work, occasional long hours or even the setbacks that were causing the drag on his mood and on people’s spirit in the team. Everyone totally accepted the need for hard graft. It was the absence of satisfaction".

Secondly his client "realised that satisfaction is psychological, it was there to be had if he chose to recognise it. Instead, in his head he had a self-pity loop going, a constant psychological focus on things gone wrong and things not done. He might not have chosen this focus consciously but it had become a habit anyway. His habit. And because it was his habit, he had the power to change it."

Peter argues that "being negative is a passive choice. If we don’t make some effort to manage mood and thoughts, it can all get easily pulled downhill when we’re busy and pressured. It’s like there’s some kind of psychological force of gravity. In contrast, being positive is an active choice, and choice we have to make each day, and sometimes more than once a day!"

The rule!

We all like guides and devices to help us along, so here's one from Peter.

His client decided to make a rule. It was that: “I make the effort to start every day and every week clear and positive, and I end every day and week, looking for reasons to be proud and things to celebrate”.

This rule related not only to 'self' but also to how we manage people.

The rule in action

On a personal level, Peter's client now takes Norman Mailer’s classic advice: “Don’t just comb your hair each morning before you come to work, comb your brain”. He takes some time even in the shower or in the car to check his attitude and choose how he’ll tackle the day and the challenges and setbacks that will inevitably arise. On the way home he looks back and finds reasons to be satisfied (as well as dissatisfied) and draws comfort from General Patton’s observation “If a person does their best, what else is there?”

With the team he now has a start-of-week meeting. It’s short, upbeat and focused. There’s a bit of humour. Each person reports in on:
• Why this will be a good week (Key goals)
• Challenges I’ll face
• Support I’ll need
• Support I can offer others.

It takes fifteen minutes but in reality most people were taking at least as much time to get into first gear on a Monday anyway. They end the week with a Friday review meeting. Similarly short, focused and upbeat. People report in on:

• Proudest achievement this week
• Other accomplishments
• Problems and learning points
• Actions for next week

Each day he’ll spend a few minutes with each person for a brief catch-up along similar lines: Direct, positively-slanted, solution-focused, action oriented questions. He reckons it has paid dividends in terms of how he feels and the spirit in the team and this has translated into increased engagement, lower absenteeism, less grief, and better results. There are still problems. There’s still hard work, but there’s more of a sense of pride, satisfaction and accomplishment to tilt balance that helps everyone feel better and do better.

Peter asks us "do you recognise any of this in ourselves and if so, what will our response be?" "What positive change will we make?"

Peter suggests we:




Fish! By Lundin and Christiansen with its classic piece on “Choose your attitude”.

Also the fantastically insightful, inspiring and life-changing:

“As a man thinketh” by James Allen. .

Written by Peter Rogan on behalf of the Future Positive Team: March 2009

©Copyright Future Positive Consulting Limited 2009. All rights reserved.