Do Business Well

Negative thinking is, unfortunately, very common. As you will most likely agree, being negative is not a desirable characteristic for success-bound employees. How negative are you about your work? For example, do you typically:

• Spend large amounts of time worrying about your inadequacies?
• Defer to other workmates when you know you can speak competently on an important issue at a meeting?
• Hold back from submitting a major project because you think it’s not good enough?
• Compare yourself to others and always come out on the losing side?
• Choose not to make waves in potentially difficult situations?

These items paint a very negative picture, don’t they? Before this negativity gets too entrenched, let’s focus upon what can be done about it. For starters, why not check yourself to see how frequently you are thinking or feeling negatively? It’s helpful to carry a notebook with you and when you catch yourself thinking or feeling negatively, then jot down some notes about the situation. Use the following headings to monitor your negative thoughts and feelings.

Log of negative thoughts and feelings：Where?, When?, With whom?, Why?

The first three headings will be easy to complete. However, the why? question may pose some problems. You might know that you’re feeling off and very negative, but there might be no apparent cause or reason. Instead of leaving a blank, try guessing, as guesses give at least some information.

Having monitored your thoughts and feelings for a week or two, read your notes and see if there are any trends. At this point it is necessary to say that if your notebook was filled by day three or four and you continued to feel grey to black for the remaining period, you may want to seek professional advice. Your local doctor or a clinical psychologist will be interested to review your notes to learn more about your daily feelings and thoughts.

Assuming that there is no psychopathology (that is, you are essentially well, but have the occasional negative episode), then you may well want to know what can be done about your negativity.

Managing negative thoughts and feelings

Most people, if given the choice between positive or negative thoughts, would choose the former. That’s the proper choice, but what do you do about the negative residue? Here are some suggestions about how you can manage negative thoughts and feelings.

• Use the stop sign technique. Briefly, whenever you find yourself thinking negatively and you wish to get on with your work, focus your mind upon a stop sign. As you spell the letters s-t-o-p to yourself, clench a hand into a fist and contract the muscles as you spell each letter and say the word, stop to yourself. The visual, auditory and tactile stimuli which preoccupy your mind will displace effectively the negative thought or feeling. Repeat the process as often as necessary.
• Stand up or turn away from your workspace when your work is affected by negative thinking. Do not allow yourself to be worrying and fretting unnecessarily while trying to get on with your work.
• Keep a worry list. Some worries are worth worrying about, so write them down and spend some time after work reviewing the list and thinking constructively about solutions. By keeping such a list, trivial worries will be given short shrift and you will find yourself saying, Don’t be silly! It’s ridiculous worrying about that!
• Do something about worries which are realistically based. Think creatively and laterally, entertaining a range of possible solutions.
• If you find that some negative thoughts have no possible solution (Most of my workmates are taller than I am.), then ban the thought from your mind and replace it with a more positive one. See the next section for some suggestions.
• Chart the frequency of your negative thinking. As you go through your workday, make a mark in a notebook every time you think negatively. At the end of the day, simply count the number of marks and chart them on a graph. Work diligently at trying to get the graph to go down—that is, work at thinking negatively less frequently.
• Reward yourself for working through days in which you
  have had less frequent negative thoughts and/or feelings.

• Ifyour negative thoughts and feelings persist, see your doctor or a clinical pyschologist.

In essence, then, negative thinking can be an irksome and counter-productive habit which can undermine your work effectiveness. Just as you learned this habit, you can un-learn it. Counting and charting your negative thoughts will decrease the frequency of these work interrupters and taking time for creative problem solving should help you to eliminate some from the worry list.

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