The Power of Good News in turbulent times
It’s 8:30am! He’s still not here and I am alone preparing for the workshop at 9:00am. I told him to be here at 8:00am at the latest! I knew it! I should have expected it. He comes from South Europe and they are always late. Probably still sleeping. So irresponsible! While she is “tripping” in anger, he is actually waiting in the crowded lobby to ask where the meeting room is. It is his first time in this conference center and he arrived there at 7:55am.
It seems like our brain likes drama! We are so fast to judge and fill our heads with all kinds of scenarios. What is even more interesting is that most often we tend to imagine more bad than good. And often there is no space for something in the middle: it’s either bad or good, high or low, slow or fast…
It seems like the media world picked up on this quick human binary thinking and adapted to it accordingly. I don’t know how about you, but I don’t remember hearing a positive story in the recent news about a business which has flourished during Covid-19 times. It’s all about the companies which lost their revenue and fired people.
The plain fact is that good news is not news! Good news is barely reported because it’s not interesting to us due to our strong craving for drama. Even when gradual improvements are reported, we tend to notice the small dips rather than the overall positive trend.
This is scary! It means that we are unnecessarily more negative than we should. Constantly hearing those negative stories affects our mental health making us believe that the world around us is consistently more negative than it actually is. What can we do about this?
Brutally enforce Positive News on yourself
Knowing that probably we cannot change our media business world in the short-term, we need to do something more within our sphere of influence. First, start with the awareness that you are unnecessarily bombarded with negative news not only from the media, but also the surrounding environment such as your colleagues, family and friends. We are wired to over-dramatize things. Somehow makes us more interesting to listen to!
Once you acknowledge this fact, you need to train a new nerve in your head, where each time you hear something negative happening, it tells you that probably there is something positive going on, too. You simply are not exposed to this information. So in the end, it’s not so bad!
If you want to be even more influential, even provocative, try another trick in your business or even family setting! Put out “Positive News” as an agenda item in your team meetings or dinner chats. Why not start your meeting or dinner each time with positive news from your perspective? This is a great ice-breaker to show people that not everything is as bad as it looks! It can truly boost a team’s morale and motivation to work. The same goes for your family setting.
And, in case you want to upgrade your media intake sources, check out SGN Positive News channel on Youtube which is focused only on positive things! Let’s be more optimistic and spread positive stories.
Originally published at https://nainyte.com on October 2, 2020.
