As a workplace leader, you must appear confident to your employees, or they won’t trust you. However, it’s hard to be confident when you are surrounded with negativity. Negative thoughts bring you down, sap your energy, and lower your confidence.
So what can you do when you are constantly bombarded with negativity from the news, work dramas of your employees, or ongoing crises in a friend’s or relative’s life? The answer contains a lot of “food for thought.”
What does food have to do with confidence?
You must make a conscious effort to think positive thoughts, just like you choose your food at a restaurant. For example, if you are at large breakfast buffet, it will be packed with delicious breakfast food. However, you may not like some of it. You may not want the bacon or oatmeal. You may choose the French Toast or Pancakes, or an omelet.
When you make your choice, what are you doing? You are focusing on the positive. Your mind simply skips over the choices that don’t appeal to you.
You don’t aggravate yourself because there is coconut in the mixed fruit and you hate coconut. You simply choose a large wedge of watermelon, instead of berating the mixed fruit.
Choosing Positive Thoughts
It’s the same with your thinking, but it isn’t so easy. You need to make an effort to seek out the positive. It isn’t easy because bad news and the need to “be in the know” is so tempting. Perhaps the best you can do is try to balance the negative with the positive.
Three Ways to Be Positive
So, in a world where you are surrounded by negative, you must pick out the glimmering diamonds in the coal mine of negativity, the roses in the bush of thorns, and the thoughts that make you feel good. Here are three ways to choose positive thoughts:
1. Positive People
- Spend more time with positive people. These are the people who are upbeat and enthusiastic. They are the ones that give you positive energy.
- You can find positive things about the negative people you work with or live with. Just like with the buffet, you overlooked the food you didn’t want, with people, you can overlook the aspects of their personality that you don’t like.
- You can say positive things to others. For example, you can find something to thank them for, or let them know in some other way that you appreciate what they did, or qualities they have.
2. Spread Positive News
Spread good news around your company. When a project is on schedule, don’t just ignore it, praise its progress. Give employees a stack of “Good News” forms for them to fill out whenever something good happens. Post them on your bulletin board. Create an atmosphere of positivity. That will encourage and energize your staff.
3. Handle Negativity with Positive Action
Of course, there are negative situations that come up at work and must be tackled, so the first thing is to choose to look at them in a positive light. Many times this takes looking at the big picture rather than details. Make a list of positive actions you can take to correct a negative situation. Try one at a time and observe the results. Enlist others to help you.
In these 3 ways you can start serving delicious “food for thought” to everyone you encounter during the day. Your positive energy will energize and inspire others and will make you a more confident leader.
Unfortunately, there are so many different negative situations come up in the workplace that we can’t include them specifically in a blog post.
However, as a leader it’s essential that you handle them with confidence. That is why we created the Leadership Confidence Self Study Course for workplace managers and supervisors. It covers many specific negative workplace problems and tells you how to deal with each of them in a confident way. It also comes with “Hold Your Hand” support if you need extra help.
