Helping yourself to Anticipate the Positive.

Ah, Matt, can I schedule a chat with you please?

Why does my heart drop a little every time a salesperson says this? I am assuming a) some disaster is about to strike b) they are unhappy with me or someone in the team c) they are about to quit.

How about when I ask someone to wait behind after a meeting and they ask me if they are in trouble.

Where does all of this come from? How come we often think that someone is wanting to deliver bad news?

I think that in our business we spend an awful lot of energy getting business, and we also know how easy it is to lose it. This is part of it.

In our culture we are more likely to complain than to compliment. We know that someone is unlikely to schedule a meeting just to tell us what a great job we have done. We are more inclined to beat down failures than praise success. Probably part of it too.

Here is the bit that I want to focus on today – I think that we are walking around expecting bad news. We have got used to that over the past little while.

If you are on the lookout for something bad going down then that is what you will see. If you are on the lookout for something good going on, then you might just see a bit more of the good.

This is an example of a psychological phenomenon called priming – It is not just woo-woo pseudo-science positive thinking. It is real and it is used on (and against) you whether you like it or not. Marketing is full of priming, but we also prime ourselves often without realising it.

I have talked about routines and habits in the morning at length. Stretching, running, other exercise, all well and good. But I think that there are other aspects that I am missing out on. Those ones that require sitting still, like meditation and visualisation. Anything stationary seems like I am not achieving, anything that you have to stop and do I tend to try to avoid.

But I think that if we stop, maybe we can achieve more. A few ideas come to mind. When you refuel/recharge your car, you pull over, stop the engine, get out and fuel up or plug in. And my nemesis – admin! You have to stop the daily churn and do both life and business admin or no end of trouble awaits.

I confess that I do hate to stop and get fuel… such a waste of time… so the challenge I am about to set for myself might take some doing. And don’t even ask about admin…

Priming comes into this equation through visualisation. If I visualise the things that I would like to achieve, or that I would like to happen, I know that I will be more likely to be able to promptly notice the opportunities that lead to the likelihood of the desired outcomes occurring, and then be in a position to promptly act and take advantage of what I have noticed.

So, to set myself a little challenge, I am going to build a habit and focus on this for the next couple of months – that will take me through to the end of the year. I am going to focus on home and family, health and fitness, business, and to round this out I will focus on a couple of creative ideas that I have floating around. I am going to reengineer my mind to look for the opportunities that appear in front of me. That should take less than 10 minutes from my morning. I can manage this. In early January, I will let you know how I get on – who knows, I might even update you along the way.

Feel free to join me on this journey – and let me know how you get on. If you would like a little bit more information on priming please see below.

​​​​​​​Have a great week and stay well out there!

Here is Wikipedia on Priming.

And quite possibly the master of priming, Tony Robbins.

This idea was in part inspired by this article I read over the weekend – when I realized I was getting the physical workouts done, but missing the quiet and still workouts (sorry about the paywall… again).