What is a positive attitude? To what extent do you have it? If you have a positive attitude, what actions might you display? How do you communicate it? What does a positive attitude “look” like to others? How do we differ in expressing our respective positive attitudes? How are we the same in expressing positivity? What is a negative attitude? If you have a negative attitude, what actions might you display? How does your communication look like? What does a negative attitude “look” like to others? How would you teach others to be more enthusiastic and motivated? Which exercise from the NVC document would you choose to teach a group of people? Why?
1. I think that a positive attitude is an ability to think positively about yourself, things, and situations. Also, a positive attitude helps people to solve any problems pleasantly. Lately, I realized that the extent to which I have a positive mind depends on how much free time I have. The funny thing is, that even when I’m tired because of having too many issues and tasks, I think much more positively about everything in my life than when I have too much free time. Probably, it relates to the fact, that when I am concentrating on my own business, I don’t have even a slight moment to spend reading bad news or gossiping, feeling pity, and other negative emotions.
When I have a positive attitude, the first thing I do is smile. My personality type is ISPF, and we tend to be very emotional. No wonder that you can easily see all my emotions on my face (I would become a horrible poker player). Also, my voice becomes softer and a little higher, and my movements become a bit slower and calmer. But the best thing about having a positive attitude in my life is that it helps me to see that every difficult situation can be solved, and there are so many opportunities to do it!
Many times, I heard from people around me, that in that state I “look happy”, and my manager doesn’t miss a chance to comment on it. She often says, that when I’m positive I become calm, patient, helpful, and generous when dealing with people. Therefore, I think, that to others a positive attitude looks like consistency and happiness, which makes others more efficient and self-assured.
I think, that as soon as all people have different personalities, there is nothing weird in the fact, that we can also express a positive attitude differently. For example, some people can become more talkative and even lazy (letting things just happen without much control, because they start believing that everything will be okay itself), while others may concentrate on their tasks and do even more jobs than they would usually do (because they will feel more energized and confident). Some people will try to spread their positive thinking to everyone around them, trying to show them how beautiful the world is, while others may follow the belief that “happiness loves silence”.
But, of course, there are also some common things that all types of people do when they have a positive attitude. For example, all of us tend to smile and laugh more, than usual. Other things that we all do, are focusing on the good things, being happy when other people succeed, being kind to others, and being enthusiastic and hopeful.
2. Quite the opposite, a negative attitude is when you are pessimistic about yourself, things, and situations. When you have a negative attitude, you usually do not see opportunities and a scared to fail.
In such a mood, I become grumpy, often frown my eyebrows, and do not speak much. Everything I do starts irritating me very quickly, and even slight mistakes (of me or others) can burn the fire insight of me (and on my face, which becomes extremely red in 0,001 seconds). The sentences I say tend to be very short and the intonations I use sound not very pleasant to the ear. I become impatient, nervous and tweaky, annoyed, and can even say something I will regret later.
All this doesn’t look good to others, at all. They might even try to avoid me, and everybody around me is probably glad that in general, I am a very positive person. In a negative state, people can notice that I criticize too much, complain, and exaggerate mistakes. Such behavior can even cause and raise a conflict and will poorly affect the quality of work or any other kind of task.
3. First of all, I think that it is important to understand what exactly can make people unmotivated and sad. Then, they can measure whether these issues can be solved, or not. There is no use in being negative about things that cannot be changed – we all should move forward and think about the future, not the past. It is also important to realize, that thinking and acting are not the same things. Let’s consider a simple example: if you are fat and are dreaming about a beautiful body, you should not simply hope that it will change one day – you should do sports and start eating a healthy diet. Another trick is, that you should stop trying to convince yourself that you are already excited with what you have if it is not true. You will feel even more miserable because you will be lying to yourself. Let’s test this idea on the previous example. A woman looks in the mirror and realizes, that she is too fat and needs to lose some weight. Even if she immediately starts going to the gym on a schedule and eating healthy stuff, it will take some time for her to make changes in her body. However, she starts convincing herself that she is beautiful and she likes her appearance. There is nothing bad in such thoughts at all – unless you start frequently looking at the mirror and planting into your mind, that you are excited with what you see. Most people will feel embarrassed in such a situation and will feel even worse about themselves. Therefore, often it is better not to concentrate on things that disappoint you and I would advise you to think more about things that make you happy, energized, and excited. For example, instead of convincing yourself, that you are already content with what you have, simply think about changing the real situation to what you will like, and how good the result of your actions will be.
4. To be honest, it was a little difficult for me to choose between Exercises 4 and 6. But in the end, I decided that Ex.6 would be a more interesting and important thing for teaching a group. I chose it, because there you learn more about yourself and others, in situations when you hear something that you do not like to hear. In the modern world, in all aspects of our lives, it is extremely important to be able to understand not only our own feelings about what we hear, but also empathize and understand, what others feel when they say these unpleasant things to us – what their motivation could be, what their emotions were, and how they could say it differently so our reaction was a more positive one.