Named after French physician Guillaume Duchenne, who first noted an anatomical distinction between a week, or fake smile, and one that reveals a truly spontaneous emotion. His work took place in the mid-nineteenth century during a study of human facial expressions.

The alternative to the Duchenne smile, one without ‘crows feet’ around the eyes, is what is often called a PanAm smile – so named because it resembled the mild smile with which customers were greeted when they boarded the now-defunct PanAm airlines. What is notable about the Duchenne smile are the physiological responses that take place in the body when a smile is genuine.

Consider this from Dan Johnston, PhD…

Dr. William Fry, a physician and researcher, has studied humor for 20 years and found that it is good for us — not only for our mood — but for our health as well. Laughter relieves stress and improves our immune system. Laughing has been described as an internal jog; massaging our inner organs and giving them a workout. Smiling exercises 14 facial muscles.

When we laugh our blood pressure goes up and then comes down. We also stretch our lungs, relax our chests, and breathe easier. Laughter causes our bodies to release neurochemical compounds associated with an improved mood. When we can laugh at something, we change our perspective and our attitude.

So, how often do you smile? Research has found that four-year-old children smile and laugh about 400 times a day while for adults smiles and laughter decrease to only 14 times a day. Four-year-olds are often joyous, and adults are not.

Just think what might happen if you were to smile even half as many times as a four-year-old. The results might surprise you, and your coworkers. Sometimes the best way to affect change is with something simple, accessible, and easy to do. A smile meets all these criteria, and few people will be offended as you walk down the hall at work.

DARE TO BE GREAT!
Your LQ Team

Author David Cottrell, president and CEO of Cornerstone Leadership Institute, invites you to look at Monday in a whole new way – while some may dread Monday, he shows how it can be the perfect kick-off to a winning week. The book includes dynamic quotes that reinforce ideas and themes laid in out as 12 Powerful Ways to Go From Everyday to Extraordinary.

The core message of this book is that success is about choices, not just luck, or good fortune. By taking time to ask better questions, and make tough decisions opportunity will be part of the process, not just a possible outcome.

David Cottrell is the author of other Monday Morning-themed books such as: Monday Morning Mentoring, Leadership, Customer Service, and Monday Morning Communication.

Twelve Choices, Twelve Questions

The Character Choices

1. The no-victim choice: Don’t let your past eat your future. Do I accept total responsibility for my success?
2. The commitment choice: Be passionate enough to succeed. Am I committed to paying the price for success?
3. The values choice: Choose the right enemies. Do I accept that there will be enemies who oppose my values?
4. The integrity choice: Do the right thing. Will my success be accomplished without a sacrifice of my integrity?

The Action Choices

1. The do-something choice: Don’t vacation on Someday Isle. Will I attach complacency and do something daily toward success?
2. The persistence choice: Learn from failure. Will I hang in there, beyond failure, long enough to achieve success?
3. The attitude choice: Take the enthusiastic approach. Will I take a positive approach to the unexpected twists and turns of life?
4. The adversity choice: Conquer difficult times. Will I attack adversity, regardless of what happens along the way?

The Investment Choices

1. The relationship choice: Connect with success. Will I invest time in building positive relationships?
2. The criticism choice: Embrace tough learning. Do I accept criticism as valuable feedback?
3. The reality choice: Face the truth. Am I true to myself and all those around me?
4. The legacy choice: Give your gift. Do I share the gift of my experience and knowledge with others?

Each of these twelve choices and partner questions are presented in a book that is designed to be used over twelve weeks. The meditative quality of this book, and the authors suggestion that it be read as part of a group committed to change, provides a simple and effective formula for living into the success we desire.

DARE TO BE GREAT!
Your LQ Team

While there are many ways to go about creating a valuable PowerPoint message, there are some primary rules that ensure the message participants hear, is the message you intended to deliver.

Working to deliver a clear message is the core of training any topic. Getting that message across has come to include the use of PowerPoint as the leader in presentation software.

MicroSoft’s Small Business Center website shares a perspective about the use and value of PowerPoint, you can read the full Top Ten list here. An excerpt from this article highlights the challenge with uses this dynamic software to the best effect.

Cherie Kerr knows how PowerPoint can be both provocative and persuasive in a business meeting. She’s also aware that precisely the opposite can occur. “It can be the very best friend you have,” says the Santa Ana, Calif., public relations consultant. “But you have to use it right.” Kerr’s two-sided view of Microsoft’s popular presentation and graphics program in Office Small Business mirrors a debate coursing through business and academia. While many embrace the values of PowerPoint as a potent business tool, there are others who contend that it’s a drag on effective interaction ó that it confuses, distorts and even strangles communication. (Read Full Article)

You know many of these rules, so consider this a refresher to have the most impact possible.

Rule #1 Avoid using black text on a white background
From a distance of more than 5 feet, this color combination will prove difficult for participants to read. When the lights are on, the white screen will wash out the text. When the lights are off black font loses sharp edges and is hard to see.

Rule #2 Avoid using font that is Red, Green, or Blue
These colors may appear bright on their own, but they are not easily seen in a training room from more than 5 feet away. These colors are also the kind that may prove hard to see depending on the strength of a participants vision. These colors also will not work based on following rule number three.

Rule #3 Avoid using a light or white background as this is hard to observe from more than 5 feet away
The best background colors are black, dark blue, dark green, dark brown, dark gray and other dark color variations. It is easier to see text that is white or light colored over a dark background than any other color combination. This is true whether the lights are on or off in the training room.

Rule #4 Avoid using any font size smaller than Arial 20 in bold or regular style
The ability to read a slide from more than 5 feet away in almost any light conditions is made possible by using a high-contrast white font over a dark background that is at least 20 points in height. The largest font you might use is 26 to 30 points in height, though these are usually used for the title.

Rule #5 Avoid the use of clip-art cartoons to ensure a clean and polished message
I know there are many cool graphics available, be clear – clip-art is one worth avoiding. If you want to show people, show an image by using a search engine to locate photos of professionals. If you have actual employee images that are professionally developed, then you may consider using these photos to add an authentic appeal. Note: If employee turnover is high, avoid using actual employee photos.

Rule #6 Use graphics and other icons to enhance even the most basic text
Bright graphics minimize eye fatigue by delivering a visually engaging message on each slide. The graphics must be related to the topic in some way to avoid being a distraction. The goal is to tell the story in a visual manner that is echoed by the text on the slide.

Rule #7 Avoid the use of automatic slide transitions and sound effects
The idea behind automatic slide transitions is to deliver a smooth progression of information – as part of an information kiosk. Using transitions that are activated with the click of a mouse button. In front of participants automatic transitions can lead to embarrassing back-tracking. If you want to add elements with an audio-visual edge use a DVD player to inject a short film, or anecdotal clip into the presentation.

DARE TO BE GREAT!
Your LQ Team

The ability to take a bad situation and turn it around is a unique skill that can at times, seem like something only a super hero can do. In this dynamic book, Steve Zaffron, CEO of Vanto Group, a consulting firm dedicated to elevating organizational performance, and Dave Logan, faculty member at the Marshall School of Business at the University of California, and former associate dean, provide vivid case studies of how the application of three laws can make performance dreams a reality.

The book is written in a direct and approachable manner, with powerful stories, excellent questions, and clear proof they have discovered how performance is made possible. So, what is this book about? It is about the fact that until real conversations happen, free of ‘game playing’ and artifice no organization can succeed.

The Three Laws

1. How people perform correlates to how situations occur to them
2. How a situation occurs arise in language
3. Future based language transforms how situations occur to people

What does ‘occur’ mean? Think of a time when you saw a photo of yourself just taken by a friend.You said, “Oh, let’s take another, I look silly in that picture!” To which your friend replied, “C’mon, you look great!”.
While you are looking at the same picture, it ‘occurs’ differently to each of you.

This is how a situation can ‘occur’ in many ways depending on the people involved. Take this common situation and apply it to your professional environment, perhaps you and a coworker do not get along well. The situation that occurs to you might be something like: “They only got the job because they are related to the owner.” While the situation occurs to the other person as, “If I weren’t related to the owner people might respect me – no one knows how hard it was to get this job.”

Transforming an Impossible Situation

In chapter one of this book starting on page 3 is the following story that highlights how two people can apply the three laws to transcend even the deepest challenges.

Antoinette Grib, a white South African senior manager of Lonmin, was speaking to a group of about one hundred people when an elderly community member stood up, interrupted, and insisted on saying something to her. The woman, Selinah Makgale, began: “Antoinette, I have an issue with you.”

Grib’s shock was obvious. She said, “But I don’t even know you.”

Makgale continued, “Yes, I don’t know you personally, but you are a white South African woman, and I have an issue with white South African women. When I was thirteen years old, my parents told me that I needed to be the housekeeper for the white Afrikaans that owned the farm we worked on. It was payment for us working the farm. I was like a slave, not earning a cent. The woman, she was very, very bad to me. Getting through the year was tough. I’ve been hating white South African women ever since.”

Makgale paused, then continued, “I’m sorry, even though I don’t know you, I’ve been sitting here for days hating you and all the other South African women. You probably weren’t even born when all this happened.”

Grib smiled and said, “No, I wasn’t.”

After another thoughtful moment, Makgale finished with: “Please accept my apology – you and all the other white South African women here. I apologize to you all for making you a faceless group and hating you.”

Some people grew serious, others looked to be remembering the past. Some shook their heads. All were visible touched by Makgale’s courage and intent to close a chapter from the past.

The senior management took the next step, saying,

Selinah, I see that I represent something to you with my blond hair and my blue eyes that caused so much pain in your life all those years ago. I ask your forgiveness for the mistakes my people made… I think we’re fortunate to live in a country now, since 1994, where we can move forward and we can live together. I offer you my support in getting this issue completely resolved. If you want, I will go with you to visit the woman who treated you so poorly and see if there are some amends that can be made. We can try that.

Both women started to cry – one elderly, poor, and black, and one young, wealthy, and white. Makgale replied, “Yes, I am willing to do that. Thank you very much. I hope our future can grow better than before.” The group cheered.

In this brave dialogue, the first law (How people perform correlates to how situations occur to them) was expressed by Makgale. The second law (How a situation occurs arise in language) was visible in the clarity that was achieved through clear and honest language. The third law (Future based language transforms how situations occur to people) was applied when they both looked to the future as a creative opportunity, a place to make things right, instead of a place that was already wrong.

This story moved me deeply, most of all because the message the three laws deliver is that two people have to see each other, and the situation from a common vantage point. The listening required is more than the norm. To activate the greatness of these laws requires one to supplant their ego, with no room to take offense. These laws also call upon our creative humanity to envision a different future, and to then commit to making it a reality, together.

This books will challenge you to look at a situation, and people as if you are seeing yourself for the first time. To leverage the wisdom in this book it takes a deep level of interest in others, in order to see, hear, listen, and understand how the world occurs to those other than you. Leaders who are willing to take the first step will be rewarding themselves and those with whom they work, for generations.

DARE TO BE GREAT!
Your LQ Team

The title, ‘Why People Don’t Buy Things’, written by Harry Washburn and Kim Wallace, caught our attention as it asked a different question about buying motives – a question we have not heard very often. While it is easy to look for the many reasons why a person DOES buy a product or service, this book sharply identifies the communication that turns a potential buyer into a lost sale. These communication turn-offs are not based just on language, they are connected to the type of buyer to whom one is selling. Through understanding of the buyer, and a focus on specific communication styles this books redefines how each conversation can be tailored to answer the unspoken questions of various types of buyers.

Three Buying Profiles: Three Languages
The following is an excerpt from the book found on pages 20 and 21.
This section introduces the three buying profiles that characterize to ‘whom’ we are selling a product or service.

“To build rapport and gain prospects’ trust and confidence, you need to “speak their language.” And to speak their language, you need to know what mode or profile they use to view the world. In the mid-1970’s at the University of California at Santa Cruz, researchers Richard Bandler and John Grinder discovered through an analysis of the practices of highly successful psychotherapists they people internally “represent” the world about them in one of three different profiles. The most successful therapists were instinctively communicating with their patients in the same profile their patients were using. Although these successful therapists had personal communicating styles of their own, they willingly abandoned these in favor of their patients’ styles. They intuitively used the same verbal and body language used by the patient. This built rapport and increased the patients’ trust and confidence in the therapist. As a result, the therapist was much more likely to produce positive changes in the patients behavior.

Bandler and Grinder called their system Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP, and it has become an important part of therapist training over the years. One of the most engagin books they’ve written about NLP (it’s actually a transcript of NLP training workshops they conducted) is Frogs Into Princes, published in 1979. NLP has since grown into a highly successful sales training technique, with an emphasis on specific ways to establish rapport and build trust and confidence with prospects in a variety of selling situations.

In this chapter we take the NLP approach further, by showing you how to very quickly and accurately identify prospects by one of three easily remembered buying profiles: the Commander profile, the Thinker profile, and the Visualizer profile. We’ll show you how to immediately identify these profiles by verbal language and eye movements, with further clues from your prospects’ body language and physical body type, the clothes they wear and how they wear them – even their office environments. Then we show you how to mirror their verbal and body language to rapidly establish rapport and build their trust and confidence in you. In following chapters we show you a completely new and very powerful way to use buying profiles. We will show you which categories of sales points will be more persuasive for each buying profile.

This excellent book goes beyond some the basics of building rapport, and dives into the messages we are sending, without knowing it, that are turning away even the most interested buyer. Through a five-step process the authors take the mystery out of the selling and align action with specific and observable behaviors. This book also does a great job of putting the sales person in control of one thing – themselves.

Selling is an art, and this books provides additional tools that make it a quick read with readily applied methods for connecting with every prospect in a personally relevant manner.

Inspired? Learn More Here ->

DARE TO BE GREAT!
Your LQ Team

Listen before you speak. Understand. Diagnose. Listen with your ears – and your eyes and heart. Find out what the most important behaviors are to the people you’re working with. Don’t assume you know what matters most to others. Don’t presume you have all the answers – or all the questions.

This book is an excellent resource for discovering how trust can support your goals and the goals of those you serve. This was also a resource in the sessions we created for the Solutions Vault on Trust. The reason I highlighted Behavior #11 ‘Listen First’ is because Stephen Covey suggests we listen with our heart.

This is a powerful idea, and one that is at the core of connecting our actions with the deepest needs of our clients. While trust is built over time, it only takes a moment to listen deeply. Doing so is like planting a seed in rich soil, so that it might grow in strength and beauty.

If this seems a distant correlation to the demanding terrain of the business world, consider this…

Everything you achieve is a byproduct of the trust others have given to you.

Where is this more evident than your first job. With no experience, a lot of energy, and the hope that you might land your first job, you set out to find your place in the working world. The adventure may have taken you to a restaurant, an office, a local park, painting houses, or mowing lawns in the neighborhood. The common thread in every case if that someone gave their trust to you. Before that trust was given to you, they were willing to listen. Whether you were met with skepticism, openness, or something in between, someone had to listen long enough to determine that they would give you a chance; that they would give you their trust.

The discussion of trust is always powerful and important; at this time in our shared American history, long after Enron, trust remains a rare element of corporate relationships.

So, this is what I ask you: Are you listening with your heart to your clients, employees, partners, associates, and others? Are you taking time to build the foundation of deep understanding that is required to foster a strong relationship? Are you applying your awareness of your customers needs in service to them, or are you exploiting the needs of your customers in service to you?

I know these are tough questions, which is why you don’t have to answer right now. Just listen with your heart and take time to find out if you can hear trust being shared between you and your employees, customers, and others. If you aren’t sure, here’s a few examples of how trust sounds…

• “Than ks John, I knew I could count on you!”
• “I’ll take your word for it.”
• “I’ll leave it up to you.”
• “Get it back to me whenever you like.”
• “I’ll leave a key for you under the mat.”

You can hear trust, you simply have to listen closely to realize it’s presence, or it’s absence.

Listening with your heart is how you plant a seed of listening and being heard deeply enough to create strong and durable roots. These are the roots that grow into a deep and abiding trust, with listening being one of many seeds of trust, you control the depth at which each seed is planted, the depth being equal to the strength of that element of trust.

DARE TO BE GREAT!

Phoenix R. Cavalier

Consider this quote from Bassi & McMurrer

“Companies that fail to invest in employees jeopardize their own success and even survival. In part, this practice has lingered for lack of alternatives. Until recently, there simply were not robust methods for measuring the bottom-line contributions of investments in human capital management (HCM) – things like leadership development, job design, and knowledge sharing. That’s changed.” (2007)

Start with what you can control, your mindset. If you think the work you are doing in learning and development is ancillary, or in some way not that important, take a deep breath, and say the following statement out loud:

“Now more than ever, learning and development professionals are poised to make strong and lasting contributions to the organization”

Did you say it out loud? I hope so because in order to change how others in the organization see learning and development, you must change how you present your value to others. The data is crystal clear so let’s get started.

How about those stock prices!

The white-paper ‘The Impact of U.S. Firmsí Investments in Human Capital on Stock Prices‘ - Laurie Bassi, of Bassi Investments, Inc., et al – June 2004 offers an amazingly comprehensive look at what it means for an organization to invest in their people through training and development.

In Bassi’s Training and stock performance: quartile analysis, Table 3 shows that investments in training are positively correlated with stock price returns. As seen in the table, firms in the 3rd and 4th quartiles with respect to training expenditures subsequently experience annual changes in share prices equal to 34.3 and 30.7 percent, respectively, roughly double the return experienced by firms in the bottom quartile (15.3 percent).

The table reveals similarly substantial differences across quartiles with respect to sales per employee, gross profit margin, and market capitalization per employee, and somewhat less dramatically for sales per employee, return on assets and Tobinís Q (which is essentially the ratio of market to book value of the firm).

Profit margins are a strange thing to study, as so many factors affect the final outcome. What is notable about the table shown here, and the research of Bassi and others is the simple fact that every business needs people. Taking the time to make sure the best people work for within your organization is the key to lasting prosperity.

Should we downsize?

I want to talk about the opposite of investing in people, getting rid of them. This practice, even though it has been given many names is still the act of firing good people that will be hard to replace. When times are tough, it can seem there is nothing else to do. From a lot of perspectives it can seem like a prudent thing to do as well, but it’s not. Here is a bit of data that lends itself to being shared any time the idea of ‘downsizing’ comes up as a solution to complex and challenging times.

“The evidence indicates downsizing is guaranteed to accomplish only one thing — it makes organizations smaller” (Pfeffer, 1998). In fact, the consequences of downsizing is stock prices that lag 5 to 45% behind the competition (in more than 1/2 the cases they lagged 17 to 48%), it does not necessarily increase productivity or profits, downsizing tends to be repetitive (2/3 of organizations repeat it the next year), it does not fix or improve core processes, it can be readily copied so it offers no competitive advantage, and it has unanticipated costs that limit its benefits.

As it turns out downsizing only works about 50% of the time, so if an organization likes taking huge risks, they may choose to downsize. The intangible concerns come from the ‘word on the street’ that let’s everyone know which organization ‘can’t be trusted’ – after all ‘they’re laying people off’. In spite of the ill-will that is generated from an action such as downsizing, very few firms use other means to avoid downsizing (1994 American Management Association survey). While the idea of cutting labor costs is common it is not borne out through a logical analysis of what happens after downsizing is completed.

Avoid downsizing with these options:

• reducing work hours
• reducing pay
• taking outsourced work back
• building inventories
• freeze hiring and reshuffle workers
• do training, maintenance, etc.
• refrain from hiring during peak demands
• encourage people to innovate (product, services, markets)
• transfer people to sales to build demand

When an organization puts financial resources – even if it seems modest at first – behind the learning and development professionals, the results speak for themselves. Here’s an example of how one organization has stayed sharp for more than 100 years.

Lincoln Electric is one of the leaders in its field and has not laid off since its inception in 1948. Yet it has been through all the hard times like everyone else, but during lean times, it chooses to redeploy people rather than lay them off, e.g. factory workers start selling its products in the field.

Start a discussion and bring the data to the bear on whether training is the best tool for thriving, even in a challenging economy. The data is more than clear that investing in personnel pays long-term dividends, in not only at the bank, it also pays on the street. As learning and development professionals are asked to validate their claims, it is important to know the core message is clear – training works.

DARE TO BE GREAT!
Your LQ Team

The word “strategy” is from the Greek strategia, which means “office of a general” which itself comes from the Greek word strategos, meaning “general”.

The military roots of the word “strategy” and the actions taken to fulfill a strategy create your battle plan for achieving success. When you evaluate the training actions in which you are currently engaged, what do you see? Do you find areas of fault? Are there places where improvement is important? Do you see several areas of complete success?

The key to building a strategic plan is to include flexibility as part of your strategy.

Consider this 4-minute video from www.strategicframing.com about how decisions are rewarded and viewed.
Then consider how you can use information from this video to affect how you view past decisions as you start to build future strategies.

Three Questions Video Review

1. What stood out for you in the video?
2. What did you already know?
3. What do you want to apply right away?

It is true that we can only make a decision based on the information we have at hand.

When you are tasked with building a strategic plan for training and development, you must work with the data you have today. The data in the future may look different than you expected, knowing this is a possible reality is why flexibility must be part of your strategic planning results.

How to Ensure Flexibility in Your Strategic Plan

The best way to ensure flexibility in your strategic development process is to avoid pretending that you can see the future. What may look certain today, can and will change. With that in mind here is a simple strategy for building flexibility into your planning process.

1. Plan for expansion (+)
2. Plan for neutrality (=)
3. Plan for contraction (-)

These three factors are a minimum number of variables that should be part of your strategic planning process. When you are seeking to train and develop your personnel, if you are only planning for contraction, when demand increases growth will take you by surprise, you will find yourself understaffed. The ability to have at least three paths in mind allows you to apply the most effective strategy to the situaion at hand. It is important to avoid judging past decisions as good or bad based on emerging information. This can be a challenge, but is one worth addressing.

Your Next Move

As you begin to craft a strategic plan for training your personnel, stay focused on the desired outcome, the facts you have now, and the ability to remain flexible as you gain new information. There is no error in making an informed decision as long as you are prepared to self-correct if new information demands a different response.

DARE TO BE GREAT!
Your LQ Team

This book is a fast read and one that is effective in delivering a clear message: Positivity pays big dividends. While there has been a lot said, written, and shared about the power of positive thinking, positive interaction, and positive focus this books identifies where it all began as a psychological study. Written by Tom Rath and Donald “Don” O. Clifton, Ph.D., this books is the culmination of nearly fifty-years of work performed by Don, the “father of Positive Psychology”. This book is truly a gift to anyone who reads it and is a testament to why the American Psychological Associate (APA) in 2002, recognized Don’s pioneering work and dubbed him the the “Grandfather of Positive Psychology” and the “Father of Strengths Psychology”. While Don had written many books, including the well received Now, Discover your Strengths he asked his Grandson, Tom Rath to join him in this final creation based on a theory he created in the 1960’s.

A Focus on the Positive

In 2002, around the time Don was recognized for his professional contributions, he learned an aggressive and terminal cancer had spread throughout his body. While alarming, Don chose to take action to apply his energy in a positive direction, the result is How Full is Your Bucket written with the close collaboration of his Grandson, Tom Rath. The book is based on a simple theory about how interactions with other people are defined as ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ based on the metaphor of a “bucket” and a “dipper” and the idea that everyone has one of each. This theory was applied over the last 40 years in more than 5,000 organizations, and by more than 1 million people, and counting. The magic of the book is that is often passed on to a friend, colleague, or a loved one and continues to carry out Don’s life work in Positive Psychology.

So, What is a Dipper and What is a Bucket?

• A “bucket” is where you keep each positive interaction you have
• A “dipper” is use to add to or take from the bucket of others
  

Think of each daily interaction as a drop of water in your bucket. Each drop in your bucket quenches a natural thirst for positive interaction. If you go through each day having positive interactions with people, you will find your bucket overflowing with positivity. If, on the other hand, interactions are negative, it is as if someone is coming to you, and “dipping” into your bucket – taking the good and positive from you. If you are choosing to be negative, you are emptying your bucket as you empty theirs as well.

Fast Facts About a Full Bucket

Beyond praise and recognition at work, of more than 4 million employees surveyed worldwide, including more than 10,000 businesses in 30 industries regular recognition and praise produce the following results in employees:

• Increase their individual productivity
• Increase engagement among their colleagues
• Are more likely to stay with their organization
• Receive higher customers loyalty and satisfaction scores
  
• Have better safety records and fewer accidents on the job

Five Reasons Every Moment Counts

• Moments are like drops in your bucket – in a day you are likely to have 20,000 individual moments
• 5:1 Ratio – it has been determined for every negative moment, it takes five positives to recover
• 13:1 Ratio – it has been determined that 13 positives is the maximum response to a negative interaction
• Optimist have less than one doctor visit per year, pessimist average 3.5 doctor visits per year.
• Positivity can increase your life span by 10 years

There is a science to positive thinking, and behavior. What is also true is that common sense can be applied to keep blood pressure normal, and joy levels above average: avoid negative people and environments. Do your best to find positive interaction opportunities at home and at work. Whether it is a compliment or recognition it is a moment where you can fill two buckets – theirs and yours.

DARE TO BE GREAT!
Your LQ Team

“I am responsible. Although I may not be able to prevent the worst from happening, I am responsible for my attitude toward the inevitable misfortunes that darken life. Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have – life itself.” -Walter Anderson

By determining that the best is yet to come, even when challenges arise you are choosing personal leadership and accountability as the tools you use for being your very best.

Identify and Eliminate Negative Thinking

The Mayo Clinic has been researching the effects of positive thinking. Key excerpts from an online article discuss how to identify negative ’self-talk’ – the internal monologue a person has with themselves – and how to focus on positive thinking in a deliberate manner.

Identifying negative thinking
When you think about what you think to yourself, are you using any of these thought patters?

• Filtering. You magnify the negative aspects of a situation and filter out all of the positive ones. For example, say you had a great day at work. You completed your tasks ahead of time and were complimented for doing a speedy and thorough job. But you forgot one minor step. That evening, you focus only on your oversight and forget about the compliments you received.
• Personalizing. When something bad occurs, you automatically blame yourself. For example, you hear that an evening out with friends is canceled, and you assume that the change in plans is because no one wanted to be around you.
• Catastrophizing. You automatically anticipate the worst. You refuse to go out with friends for fear that you’ll make a fool of yourself. Or one change in your daily routine leads you to think the entire day will be a disaster.
• Polarizing. You see things only as either good or bad, black or white. There is no middle ground. You feel that you have to be perfect or that you’re a total failure.

Focusing on positive thinking
If you discover that your self-talk is tending to be negative you’re NOT doomed to an unhappy or unhealthy life. The process is simple, though it takes time and practice. Here are some ways to think and behave in a more positive way:

• Check yourself. Periodically during the day, stop and evaluate what you’re thinking. If you find that your thoughts are mainly negative, try to find a way to put a positive spin on them.
• Be open to humor. Give yourself permission to smile or laugh, especially during difficult times. Seek humor in everyday happenings. When you can laugh at life, you feel less stressed.
• Follow a healthy lifestyle. Exercise at least three times a week to positively affect mood and reduce stress. Create a healthy diet to fuel your mind and body, and to manage stress.
• Surround yourself with positive people. Make sure those in your life are positive, supportive people you can depend on to give helpful advice and feedback. Negative people, those who believe they have no power over their lives, may increase your stress level and make you doubt your ability to manage stress in healthy ways.
• Practice positive self-talk. Start by following one simple rule: Don’t say anything to yourself that you wouldn’t say to anyone else. Be gentle and encouraging with yourself. If a negative thought enters your mind, evaluate it rationally and respond with affirmations of what is good about yourself.

Examples of typical negative self-talk and how you might apply a positive twist include:

Start with you – while challenges may occur how you respond is what you control. Circumstances will change, what you can keep constant is the outlook you have on the situation. Just like the table above, a positive spin may just be about looking at a situation in a slightly different way, often there is no need to start over – simply start with subtle adjustments.

DARE TO BE GREAT!
Your LQ Team