Positive psychology is a simple yet uncommon concept that doesn’t always feature in numerous aspects of daily life. In the first part of this series, The Art of Being Brilliant (Cope and Whittaker, 2012) was discussed and it evaluated the authors’ take on positive psychology within the context of being a strength and conditioning coach in soccer. The previous article also discussed principles of positive psychology that perhaps best apply to strength and conditioning coaches whereas there are other important principles that apply to us all as people. The aim of this article is to take a different view of how being a brilliant person is essential to success and progression in many aspects of life.
Negativity is infectious
Brilliant people, or ‘two percenters’, are content with almost all of their life; they often see the positive in most situations and are problem-solvers not problem-finders. These qualities are what we would all like to think we have in ourselves but with so much influential negativity around us, we can find it easier to file in and join the cascade of problem finding. Negativity becomes infectious and we filter the bad stuff to meet our often-negative world view and this can be something difficult to remove. The commute to work can feel longer, home-life isn’t fun and ambition to become better can be missing. All of these things can add up to mean that you may have a negative influence on people around you. Think about the people in your life that you can afford to have a negative impact on and there will not be many. Because the people around you are essential to the way that your life and work function. All of this relates to what Cope and Whittaker (2012) state in their book, you cannot NOT have an impact.
You cannot NOT have an impact
The principle of how we impact others is so wide-ranging with those that we interact with on a daily basis. From the people you meet at the petrol station to your family at home. There are many of examples of how we impact one another and the entrance to work is a good one to use. Take an office employee, they walk in first thing in the morning and greet their colleagues with a bright “good morning”. The response that they receive is far less enthusiastic and as a result this puts the greeter in a less than happy mood meaning that they have an average day and aren’t very productive. Such a small action can have greater and long-lasting effects. Alternatively, if the people that we encounter are enthusiastic and buoyant then the effect that they can have on those around them is genuinely positive and performance enhancing. If you transfer the impact you have as a person to the impact you can have as a strength and conditioning coach then those around you will be more productive. For example, you cannot just walk in to a session with an attitude that says, “I’ve had a bad day”, and then just switch to the positive you. The impact you are having is constant.
In relation to this, Cope and Whittaker (2012) discuss how the impact that we have often occurs in the first four-minutes of interactions. This is a long-standing principle of human resources management but applies to most daily interactions. The important thing to note is that if our impact as people is positive then it is likely to transfer to our impact as coaches. If we have a positive impact as a coach and person then we can genuinely enrich lives as well as enhance performances. Strength and conditioning coaches should have this at the forefront of their minds before they enter a session with a lively group of 14-year-olds. How will they impact them?
Understanding perspective
Perspective is a major factor in the mind of the two-percenter. It allows them to contextualise and evaluate their approach in a fair and honest manner. Like the majority of the population, we can be easily disappointed by some quite trivial things in life. For example, if we complain about having to load the dishwasher, we lose sight of the fact that we are lucky enough to have a dishwasher. In soccer, coaches and players may complain that their kit hasn’t been washed on time, forgetting that they are privileged not to have to wash it for themselves. Adjusting our individual perspective is an action that can benefit us a lot as people helping us to use the things we have around us to develop ourselves.
What perspective also brings is gratitude. People that are able to maximise their perspectives on life will make the most of what they have. As an example, a strength and conditioning coach may not be happy as the facility they are using only has one squat rack, some dumbbells and a chin up bar which is not enough for the twelve players they have to train. They are admitting defeat before they have even started and they are not thinking about ways to work with the facility and the group of players that they have available to them. As people, we should keep in perspective what we have and maintain these values in our coaching.
Choose to be positive
With all of this in mind, what does it mean to be positive? You may have read both of these articles and thought how stupidly simple these principles are, even though they are not common features of everyday life. These principles may even come across as a bit of a ‘fairy-tale’, something that sounds ideal but really, you think your life doesn’t fit in to this story. One way to understand how you approach life’s everyday tasks is to do a positivity count. During your day make a mental note of how many times you make positive or negative responses to the situations you are dealt. If the positive outweigh the negative in this count then you are ‘choosing to be positive’ which is another one of Cope and Whittaker’s (2012) obvious sounding yet rarely occurring principles. This is the last principle to be discussed as it is the most simple but important. Interestingly, out of the people surveyed in Andy Copes’ research in to positive psychology, those that reported being happy and content also report that they have made a conscious decision to lead positive lives. This doesn’t mean that they live in a different environment or mean that they can make the sunshine appear, it means that they deal with the issues encountered with purpose and intensity to get the job done. Be ready to deal with the things that life puts in the way and work hard at making those things better. Those that aren’t ready to improve their situation are the ones that focus on the negatives and make complaints.
Life lessons over…
The principles and sentiments in these articles aren’t solely those of one S&C coach telling the world to be happy. This article doesn’t assume that everybody out there is in dire misery and walking around with long faces, ready to complain about the next rise in fuel prices. These principles do highlight that we don’t all fit in to the two-percenter club and that there are things we can do to improve our outlook enriching our own lives and those around us.
Chose to live your life along with the top two-percent of happy people and try not to get dragged down with the mood-hoovers in life.
Focus on the things that you are good at and get even better at them, remember your weaknesses but don’t make them the focus of your progression.
Deal with life’s problems in a positive way, life is ten-percent of the things it throws at us and ninety-percent is made up of how we deal with it.
We filter out the things that we don’t want to see in life and mould what we do see to our own world view. Chose what you filter carefully.
Negativity is infectious, don’t be surrounded by it and help to spread it.
You cannot NOT have an impact. So make sure the impact that you have is beneficial to those around you.
Use perspective as a tool to make the best of the situation you are in.
Most importantly. Chose to be positive.
References
Cope, A., & Whittaker, A. (2012). The art of being brilliant. Chichester, West Sussex: Capstone Publishing LTD .
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