The Power Of Positivity
By Ben Tyler, 925 Head Coach
Being positive and optimistic is one of the cheapest, most effective ways to be successful and live longer. Over the years, I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to work with hundreds of people and help them accomplish their goals. Many times, they have had huge obstacles in life they have had to overcome, or, a belief that they just couldn’t possibly change after so many years of poor health and decisions.
Most of these people end up succeeding but some don’t, and some don’t even get past the decision to start. The difference between those that succeed and those that don’t is their attitude. I don’t know a single person that is successful for a sustained period of time that maintains a poor attitude. Those that succeed have positive and optimistic attitudes.
Simply by believing the best will happen and looking at every situation as an opportunity to learn makes it easy to slowly, steadily overcome obstacles. Positivity breeds positivity as well. So, those people are encouragers as well, and in turn, others encourage and support them. Can you think of a genuinely positive and optimistic person you can’t stand to be around? I would bet you can’t. What you’ll find is people who, by having a positive attitude themselves, end up being more successful because they cause others around them to be more supportive and feed off of their determination and optimism.
Plug a bunch of these people into a small environment where they spend time together and the optimism and successes explode! I’ve been amazed at what this has done to 925, and teams of people I’ve worked with over the years. A single positive person breeds another, and another, until the whole group is on fire with energy and optimism.
You can observe one of our classes and see this perfectly. People show up after a long day of work, tired and hoping to get a good workout in. As soon as they walk in the door, the Coach welcomes them, asks how they’re doing and lets them know they are glad to see them. The rest of the class welcomes them, jokes around a bit, and the Coach leads the warm-up, all the while everyone is still catching up with others who are happy to be there to workout and burn some stress.
By the end of class, all of these positive attitudes have encouraged each other and that person who walked in tired, leaves happy, with less stress, and thankful for time with those people who added some light to their day. They’ll take this positivity home and it spreads to their families and friends, and everyone benefits from a few people simply having a positive attitude and treating others well. Pretty awesome if you ask me!
Briefly, on the health side, check out this exerpt from an article summarizing the results from a Harvard study on the health effects of positive thinking:
“The study analyzed data from 2004 to 2012 from 70,000 women enrolled in the Nurses’ Health Study, a long-running study tracking women’s health via surveys every two years. They looked at participants’ levels of optimism and other factors that might play a role in how optimism may affect mortality risk, such as race, high blood pressure, diet, and physical activity.
The most optimistic women (the top quartile) had a nearly 30 percent lower risk of dying from any of the diseases analyzed in the study compared with the least optimistic (the bottom quartile), the study found. The most optimistic women had a 16 percent lower risk of dying from cancer; 38 percent lower risk of dying from heart disease; 39 percent lower risk of dying from stroke; 38 percent lower risk of dying from respiratory disease; and 52 percent lower risk of dying from infection.”
So, being optimistic and maintaining a positive attitude won’t simply just help you be more successful, it has the potential to help you live longer and very likely have a big effect on other people’s lives!
I challenge you to make a point to be positive and optimistic for a whole day - see what happens. I bet you’ll be pleasantly surprised!
Sources and further reading:
*https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-scientific-studies-prove-power-positive-thinking-mark-guidi
*https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/12/optistic-women-live-longer-are-healthier/
