Is it easier to look for the good or the bad?  Here are some studies that are referenced in the second chapter of “Switch, When Change is Hard,” by Chip & Dan Heath.

• A study of all 558 emotional words in the English language found that 62% were negative.
• People who were shown photos of bad and good images focused more time on the bad images.
• When people learn positive and negative aspects about other people, the negative aspects stick to the memory more than the positive aspects.
• When people explain events in their lives they are more likely to spontaneously bring up negative events as opposed to positive ones.

The authors then quote Leslie Fiedler, who I paraphrase here: novelists have gained a lot of fame writing about marital problems, however their has never been best seller about a happy marriage.

So, I pose this question:  Do you look for the negative prior to the positive?  When you start a staff meeting;  when you meet individually with a co-worker or employee; when giving feedback, do you first share the negative and then the positive?  When problem solving with your team, do you look at what is not working before you look at what is working?

The following is a story out of chapter 2 that shares how looking for the bright spot led to success.

“In 1990 Jerry Sterin was working for Save the Children.  He was tasked with decreasing malnutrition in Vietnam.  There were three big problems; sanitation was horrendous, clean water was not available and most rural families were ignorant about nutrition.  Combating these three problems would be enormous and expensive.  And he did not have the resources or the support to tackle those three problem areas.

He began to look for the bright spot.  He interviewed the mothers who had the healthiest children.  He found that the healthy kids ate the same amount of food, only four times a day versus the norm of two times a day.  He also found that kids were hand  fed when appropriate, instead of fending for themselves.  Finally these kids were given shrimp and crab mixed in with their normal food.  Shrimp and crab were generally considered an adult food.  And the mothers were mixing in sweet potato greens into the food, which was considered a low class food.

He then organized cooking groups with the mothers who had malnourished kids with the mothers who had healthy kids.  In these cooking groups the “bright spot mothers” were able to teach the other mothers how to cook in a healthier way.  Six months later 65% of the kids had proper nutrition and it stayed that way.”

What if tomorrow you started building on the positive, instead of focusing on the negative?  My advice is, “If you look, you will find it.”  Please share your thoughts, feelings and opinions, I am looking forward to it!! – JK