Day 16: Positive Attitude

I think we all agree doing business and leading your company or department with a positive attitude has an overall positive impact. In fact, I submit to you that we totally under estimate the value of being positive.

In the summer of 2006, I had the opportunity to interview Tom Fatjo Jr., founder of BFI, and the entrepreneur who completely changed the waste management industry. It is clearly one of my favorites. At one point in the discussion, I asked Tom if there was a person, a teacher, a mentor that had a strong positive influence in his success. He paused for a long time, and then answered by saying “yes, I read the book, The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale”.

Definitely this book was a mainstay back in the 1950’s – and was on the New York Times bestseller list for 186 consecutive weeks. The book had a powerful affect on many during that time. In fact, ask your parents or associates over 55 if they read it.

Then again, the 1950’s are so long ago, one might conclude that advocating positive psychology is totally old school. However, that is so not the case. In September of 2009 for The BusinessMakers Featured Guest segment, I had the opportunity to interview Shawn Achor, the 2010 version of Norman Vincent Peale. In fact, if anything Shawn is a more heavy duty advocate of the power of positive psychology than is Peale.

Shawn thinks the whole science of psychology has had it all upside down since the beginning. Historically, psychology mostly involved studying those that had disorders, those that were depressed, and those that were ‘below average’, in hope that methods and solutions could be found to bring them “up to average”. Conversely through Shawn’s experiences while at Harvard, he decided to study those above the curve and figure out how they got there and how they stay there. And, along the way, he discovered that those that are more positive actually achieve “higher levels of success” as a result of being positive.

Accepting this phenomenon led Shawn to pursue ways one can actually upgrade their positive attitude. And since all who read “The 30 Day Entrepreneur Challenge” are keenly focused on “higher levels of success” it seemed totally appropriate to share his proven techniques with you. In this interview, Shawn clearly focuses on the strong value of being positive as an entrepreneur.

The assignment, listen to Shawn Achor:

http://www.thebusinessmakers.com/episodes/shows/2009/september-09/episode-224/shawn-achor.html

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