The Sun & The Rain

For the most part, how an individual’s day turns out depends upon their attitude towards it and their reaction to whatever happens during its course. Clearly, there are some standout days where events occur that are utterly beyond a person’s ability to immediately maintain a calm and level-headed response and there are of course many people with conditions that make their days more challenging than most would reasonably expect them to be, but the majority of days in almost everyone’s lives are ones where it is indeed possible to keep a healthy, positive outlook. What happens around us provokes emotional responses from us and it is normal to expect a range of thoughts and feelings each day, week or month. Our lives exist in a state of emotional flux and it would be inappropriate to aim to be always happy with no potential for sadness, disappointment or fear to act as balancing agents. The simple act of being positive, however, is something that many people in our modern world of political conflict, ongoing social inequality and overcrowding either find difficult to cultivate or choose to dismiss as ineffectual, new-age nonsense. As noted by James Clear via https://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-clear/positive-thinking_b_3512202.html, positive thinking is often viewed as “a soft and fluffy term that is easy to dismiss. In the real world, it rarely carries the same weight as words like work ethic or persistence.” The value of being positive, however, goes way beyond simply keeping a smile on a face and can enable an individual to engage in learning processes that are otherwise inaccessible to those who are locked in their own cages of negativity. Whereas normal and inevitable setbacks or obstacles may prove to be endpoints for many people who have yet to train themselves to allow positivity to become a part of their everyday existence, optimists are able to implement the occasionally mocked growth mindset ideals of Dr. Carol Dweck et al and seek valuable lessons in every disappointment or reversal that they experience. As Winston Churchill once so eloquently put, “The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” For almost everyone, life is a succession of problems, hurdles and challenges, but whether an individual views each day as another chance to learn, grow and develop or another reason to moan, cry or complain about the unfairness of it all is entirely down to them. Healthy internal monologues are key to how to achieve the clarity of thought that is required to develop the positive mindsets that are needed to become the kind of people who can influence the outcomes of their own days. Put simply, we must ensure that we control our own thoughts instead of our own thoughts controlling us. For many, of course, so entrenched is negativity in their psyches, this is easier said than done, at least at the beginning of a process of change, but what we must never accept is anyone exclaiming that being negative is their normal state or that this is just the way they are, as this kind of statement would preclude an ability to make the improvements that everyone, no matter how locked into negativity they may be, possesses. Negative self-talk is not only an unhealthy habit but also a destructive form of mental self-harm that if left unchecked can affect the lives of both the individual concerned and their family, friends and colleagues. In his outstanding book The Magic Weaving Business, Sir John Jones writes that “We are the sum total of our experience. Our script, or the voice in our head, determines not only how we see ourselves, but also what we believe about ourselves and, consequently, how we behave. It is clear that if the self-talk is negative and the self-image low then our behaviour, our performance, will deteriorate. If in our lives we have suffered more discouragement than encouragement and accepted the destructive views of others, then negative scripts can become grooved in our subconscious. What is clear is that if we do not have the ability to take control of our script, that script will control us. For many the self-talk is toxic. When faced with a challenge such people are beaten before they start.” In my opinion, the habit of negative self-talk can, like all habits, be broken over time, but the first step to this happening is the will of an individual to make the leap from negativity to positivity.

 

No one exists entirely in isolation and we are all components of a greater collective whole. As parts of our communities, whatever roles we play, we all have a responsibility to each other as well as to ourselves and it is essential that we are always mindful of the impact that we can have on those around us. With this in mind, we have an obligation to seek positivity wherever and whenever we can. From my own point of view, as a headteacher in a secondary school in a challenging context, I see myself as having a duty to promote positivity at every opportunity. As well as helping to create the appropriate atmosphere for learning in the school with my colleagues so that our young people can be free to access the curriculum that we provide for them, I need to ensure that I am not seen to be negative about any of the many issues that arise each day. Gripes, quite frankly, go up, they don’t go down, and I will never complain openly or negatively to a colleague instead of having a private and positive conversation about how improvements might be secured. The example set in our schools by our leaders is of huge importance not only to our students but also to the next generation of leaders who are currently learning from how we behave, what we say and how positively we react to the pressures of the roles that we play. In every school that I have worked in, however, there are individuals who prefer darkness to light and whose negative outlooks need to be addressed so that progress across the whole organisation can be made, but the dangerous power that such colleagues wield must not be underestimated as their rain-soaked attitudes and self-limiting beliefs can, just like in any close community, be both contagious and cancerous. In their book The Art Of Being Brilliant, Andy Cope and Andy Whittaker refer to such people as mood hoovers, adding that “Mood hoovers suck all the energy out of you, leaving you feeling as rubbish as they do. It doesn’t take many mood hoovers to drag down a team.” Over the years, in so many meetings or conversations with colleagues who fit perfectly the description of a mood hoover, I have heard phrases such as it’ll never work here, our kids just won’t engage with that or that’s not how we do things around here, but I have learned that this negativity can be countered and destroyed by a positivity that can be even more contagious, and certainly more popular, than the blanket of defeatism that nobody really wants to cover their daily existence. Although I would accept that for many negativity can be a defence mechanism that protects them from whatever they imagine might go wrong and that by anticipating failure they think that they are softening its blow should it arrive, such thinking is the enemy of enthusiasm, motivation and innovation in a successful organisation. From negative thinking comes indecision, inertia, procrastination and both individuals and entire organisations going backwards rather than forwards. Instead, being intentionally and purposefully positive enables an individual and the community to which they belong to embrace challenges, to not fear the inevitable setbacks that form part of any learning journey and to make the progress that is so obviously lacking anywhere where negativity has found a foothold.

 

For both leaders in schools and successful individuals, the most important aspect of developing and maintaining a positive outlook is having vision. To visualise what something will look like instead of what it currently looks like creates a goal to work towards and leads to the development of enthusiasm, determination and ambition. Without this, complacency can set in and organisations can become like rudderless ships, with individuals onboard (including the leaders) ending up like aimless automatons who simply go through the motions each day rather than make incremental gains towards a clearly communicated outcome. A former NFL player, Steve Weatherford, has, since retiring from the sport, made a number of very pertinent points about the benefits of positivity and visualisation in a successful individual’s life, and via https://www.success.com/blog/the-power-of-positive-thinking he has noted that “You have to see things happen in your life before you can do it. It is visualization. I learned that as an athlete; don’t ever go out onto the field of competition thinking about what you don’t want to have happen, because once you let those negative thoughts enter your mind, they can more easily manifest. If you are in a place of positivity, your percentage chance of hitting the perfect punt is higher, much higher, because you are thinking about what you want to do, not what you don’t want to do, or what you don’t want to happen.” Having a vision and making it happen are, of course, not exactly the same thing, but the visualisation of positive outcomes will certainly enable an individual to maintain the drive, determination and daily investment required in order to get there. If negativity rather than positivity is more prevalent in a person’s mind, then a plan won’t even begin to form, and no fruit will ever be borne. In a study on the benefits of positivity (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1693418/), Barbara Fredrickson has suggested that positive emotions broaden a sense of possibilities, open an individual’s mind and allow the formation of new skills and abilities. Positivity, it would seem, is both the precursor to and the result of success, and the more that we forcefully attempt to make it a part of our lives the more we will benefit from its presence. The alternative, quite frankly, is to very negatively dismiss the benefits of maintaining a positive outlook to the challenges that we face each day and to unwittingly promote the benefits of negativity instead. Being positive is a choice that only an individual can make, but the impact of this decision can affect more than just that person.