Mark S. Brown

Why is it that bad news travels faster than good news? What is it that urges us to pass along bad news more often than good news?

When I look at my values, and the goals I have for my life. I want to focus on being positive, and recognizing others. This is not consistent with the fact that we love to talk about bad news.

The conflict can be traced to many factors. Not everyone is influenced equally by these factors.

1. Insecurity – If you are not secure in yourself, then you may knowingly or unknowingly feel good about making someone else feel bad. If you are insecure, then you want to show you are better than others. To feel secure about yourself, you have to learn more about yourself. A person that is secure doesn’t need individual recognition, but shares recognition with others.

2. Attention – Some of us just like attention. There are people that like to be on stage. Telling bad news gets the attention of others, and in turn creates attention for the story teller. If this is you, then try to refocus your energy and your stage performance to positive aspects.

3. Society and unawareness – Our modern society and media successfully focuses on bad news. Good news stories rarely make the headlines. Bad news stories are always the lead story, and many drag on for days and weeks. Educating yourself to become aware of the good things happening around you can help you share a positive story.

Take this challenge. When you hear bad news, don’t be a person that perpetuates the communication chain. Keep the bad news to yourself, and instead find good news that can replace the bad news in the conversation.

It is not easy, when those around you want to gossip about bad news. But work to stay true to your own values. The more you practice the easier it gets.

Face it. We all have bad moments, or even a bad day or two.

Every human faces unplanned obstacles. We don’t control all events that happen around us, and therefore we will at times be filled with non-positive emotions like anger, sadness, frustration, and helplessness.

With a goal to be positive, reciting positive thoughts in your head will not make these situations change for the better. However there are steps we can take. Here are five things that can help you regain a positive attitude.

1. Relax. When we let stress control us, our emotions become amplified. Small issues become big. Larger issues look insurmountable. When you feel your positive attitude slip away, breathe deep and relax.

2. Look for the bigger picture. Many times in emotional situations, we find ourselves focused intently on the negative. This is when you need to slow down, and look at the world as a much bigger place. At any given moment, there are people that have faced the challenge you have, or even much bigger challenges.

3. Focus on your values. The intense emotions we feel in a stressful moment can strip our values away. We feel compelled to act on impulse. Our values become lost in a whirlwind of feelings. Staying true to your values can be a challenge. Attempt to redirect your focus on how you should ideally react based on your values.

4. Ground yourself in reality. When faced with bad stressful moments it is easy to imagine the worse possible outcomes. Think about what must be done now, at this moment, not about what may come. Plan step by step how you can handle the situation at hand based on real facts. Understand that the facts are out of your control, and the only thing you can effect is how you react.

5. Begin to change your attitude. Taking action in the right direction should breakdown moments of helplessness. Once you are taking action, begin to focus on the positive. In time, you will be able to regain your positive attitude.

It is great to have a goal to remain positive all the time. In reality, we need a strategy for how to face those moments that destroy our positive attitude.

Arnold Bennett once commented, “Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labor is immense.”

The harder a task, the more rewarding the result. Have you heard that before? What about, “Nothing great is easy.”

If you want big rewards, huge satisfaction, and giant success, then you need to do the work. The sacrifice is worth the effort. If your goals are not big enough, then your reward will not be big enough either.

Dreaming big is fun. Imagining a wild amount of success. The challenge is turning those dreams into reality. You can do it. Every journey starts with a single step.

Let’s start a new journey today. Grab that pencil, find a comfortable chair, and start dreaming and planning. When you have that idea. Don’t limit your thinking. Imagine your goal, but make it 2 or 5 or even 10 times bigger.

Happy dreams!

 

 

“You must sacrifice, train, do everything possible to put yourself in a position to win. But if you consider second or third a failure, I feel sorry for you.”, said Joe Falcon.

Joe is a former US middle distance runner whose greatest success was his victory in the 1990 Oslo Dream Mile with a time of 3:49.31 minutes, which was the fastest mile in the world in 1990.

Being the best is not what is important. What is important is being the best that you can be!

You may not even be able to measure your goal against the whole world to know you are the best. But you can measure yourself against your effort and your work. You will know if you are the best you can be.

What can you do this week, to make you better? Make one more step towards being the best you can be.