The power of a positive mindset

Friends,

In the early days of the EQ movement at Amazon, I delivered a session to a room of over 100 people. The survey scores came back, and it they were really high—4.8 out of 5.

As I read through the surveys, I was encouraged by all the heartfelt responses. So many people have been informed, enriched, and inspired by the session. Then one thing caught my eye. Someone had given me a 2. They commented that the session was not useful for their role and that it had been a waste of their time.

I was distraught about it. What had happened here? Why did they find it so useless? When I returned home, it was the first piece of feedback I shared with my wife.

That’s the negativity bias in action. The funny thing is that it’s not a character flaw. The brain is doing exactly what it was built to do. Notice and remember “bad” things (more than “good” things) because it helps you stay alive. Super useful when we were roaming the plains for food while trying to avoid saber-tooth tigers. Not so useful when we are driving to Safeway to buy groceries (or giving EQ presentations). It is the thing that wears down careers, teams, marriages, and dreams. And most people aren’t even aware of it.

Amazon’s CEO, Andy Jassy, was once asked what drives career success. His answer was a bit surprising. He said that an “embarrassing amount” of career success comes from one thing: a positive attitude. It’s a can-do attitude (followed up with action, of course), being a curious learner, being a good teammate.

I’ve seen this come true over and over again in my career and in the careers of those around me. Who got the ambitious assignments. Who got pulled onto the high-visibility projects. Who people wanted in the room when things went sideways. It was almost never the “smartest” person available. It was the person who brought positive energy with them wherever they went.

Try it from the other direction. Who wants to be around negative people? Who staffs their most important project with someone who makes every meeting heavier?

A friend and startup founder of a multi billion-dollar company once shared the key question he asks himself when considering a potential hire for his team: “Would I want to take a four-hour car ride with them?” If not, then it’s a hard “no.”

Here is where most people get this wrong, and it is the reason “be positive” sounds like a platitude instead of a skill.

Your mood and your attitude are not the same thing. Your mood is like the weather. It comes, does what it wants, and goes away. You do not get a vote. Your attitude is a decision you make about how you will show up, regardless of what the weather is doing.

Daniel Goleman calls this positive outlook, and he classifies it as a competency, not a temperament. That distinction matters a lot. Temperament is what you were issued in the genetic lottery. Competency is what you can train.

You are not responsible for feeling frustrated at your team meeting. You are responsible for what you do with it.

I want to make a note here, because the word carries some baggage.

Positivity does not mean ignoring negative feelings and believing that “everything is awesome.” I am not suggesting that you should be a Pollyanna. Disappointment, sadness, grief, fear, and anger are all understandable, appropriate, and healthy responses to real situations. If your project got killed, you experience injustice, or you lose a loved one, you will (and should) feel something about that.

Suppression is not the goal. The goal is to neutralize negativity, which is something different. Suppression means you push the feeling down and pretend nothing happened. Neutralizing means you acknowledge the feeling, decide what you want to do with it (stay or shift), and keep it from taking over. Emotions are valuable signals, not mandates.

A simple technique I use that works surprisingly well is saying two words: “Yes, and.”

Yes, I am disappointed we lost that deal, and I am grateful for the three people who worked nights to get us that close. Yes, I am anxious about this conversation, and I have handled harder ones.

Not “but” (which tends to dismiss everything in front of it). “And” lets two true things sit at the same table, which is what is already happening inside you anyway. It is completely natural to feel two seemingly opposing things at once. Most of us just never realized we were allowed to.

The balance is the whole point. Some researchers put the optimal ratio at 3:1 positive to negative. Others land elsewhere, but the main point is this: have more positive than negative, so you don’t get pulled into a negative vortex. (The vortex is alive and well. To experience it, just start scrolling through the news.)

Viktor Frankl, who had more right than most humans to write off optimism entirely, coined the term “tragic optimism.” He was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp for three years and lost his whole family during the Holocaust. But even in the face of unimaginable suffering, he was able to maintain hope and find meaning. That is not denial. (Frankl was not in denial about anything.) It is using that tragedy as a pathway to growth, resilience, and action.

Sigal Barsade’s research out of Wharton found that positive emotions lead to better performance, better quality of work, and better customer service. This is a business variable, not a “wellbeing perk.” Research from the University of Kentucky links positivity to improved immune response, and Johns Hopkins research connects it to lower heart attack risk. A study done by Boston University and Harvard found that optimistic people have a 50% greater chance of living past 85 than pessimists (with an overall longer lifespan of 15%).¹

Fifty percent. For an attitude.

So the question I get in every session: what if I am just not a positive person? Should I resign myself to lower performance and a shorter lifespan?

No, you are not. Because of neuroplasticity, you can actually rewire your brain to be more positive. I laid out the two practices I rely on most in my previous piece on buoyancy: the 3x3 gratitude practice (three gratitudes a day for three weeks, which boosts both dopamine and serotonin) and SET (specific, external, transitory), Martin Seligman’s reframe for setbacks. If you missed it, you can read it here.

What I will add here is the smallest possible entry point, and the one I would actually do first.

Think of one person at work you are grateful for. Someone who did something that made a real difference for you.

Got a picture of them in your mind?

Now send them a note. Slack, email, text, whatever is closest. You can open with, “I was just thinking about you and wanted to thank you for...”

How long did that take? Under a minute. Now notice how you feel. You will feel it again when their reply comes in.

One positivity booster: create a 15-minute calendar block on Friday afternoons to send out three notes of gratitude. It is a remarkably effective way to change the tone of a weekend, both yours and someone else’s. (Credit to my AWS colleague, Suzana Curic, who shared this idea with me. In fact, she sent out a calendar invite to her entire team across Spain and Portugal to do this on Friday afternoons. I am sure that a spirit of positivity blankets Iberia every Friday!)

That is the part I hope you really think about. Attitude is not something you talk yourself into. It is something you build from small, deliberate acts that are repeated until your brain is literally rewired. Gratitude is not a feeling you wait for. It’s an intentional instruction you give to yourself. And the more you do it, the more things you notice around you to be grateful for, which increases your positivity. It is literally upgrading your brain’s operating system.

Positivity is not a fixed personality trait that you have no control over. It is not naïveté, and it is not a requirement to feel good all the time. It is a trained capacity to keep the negative from taking the steering wheel so you can think creatively, decide well, and be someone people want to invite to the party when the pressure is on.

Your moods and feelings will keep doing whatever they want. That is fine. That is what they do.

Your attitude is yours.

I am still working on mine. I still find the 2s (or even a 1!) in a page of 5s. The difference now is that I catch myself doing it, name it, learn from it, and go back to read the other ninety-nine.

(And for what it is worth, I can appreciate that the EQ session was not relevant to the person’s role. It took me a while to reframe the feedback as data instead of an insult, but I got there.)

Be EPIQ,

Rich

¹Optimism is associated with exceptional longevity in 2 epidemiologic cohorts of men and women. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1900712116

P.S. If this was useful, I would love for you to share it with someone carrying a heavier-than-usual week. And if you want the mechanics behind training this, the buoyancy piece has the 3x3 and the SET framework in full.

Strengthen your positive outlook and other EQ skills by taking my masterclass, Emotional Intelligence for Resilient, Adaptable & High Performance Leadership, on Sep 12-19. The class has been a smashing success with 5-star ratings across the board.