I can’t work out in the mornings–and I DON’T run.
These are two universal truths I’ve held onto for the last ten years. In conversation with a friend not long ago, I touted my truth for the thousandth time and she responded with, “What do you mean, you can’t work out in the mornings?” I said, “I can’t. I’ve tried and it doesn’t work for me.” Knowingly, she replied, “You’re just going to have to get over that and get it done.” I confess I was a little insulted. Hadn’t I just said that I don’t do those things; that I couldn’t? I rolled my eyes (we were on the phone so she couldn’t see me) and said I’d think about her advice (of course I had no intention of doing that).
Then something happened. That night, I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned all night, moved to the living room, counted sheep and just tried everything I knew to fall asleep. I think I finally drifted off just before 5:00am for a couple more hours before starting the day. I woke grumpy and was short tempered all day. After all, I hadn’t slept well. How terrible.
Later that day, I was listening to Shawn Achor’s book, the Happiness Advantage, and trying to give myself some shots of positivity. I started reading about what positive psychologists call an optimistic explanatory style. Basically, there are two kinds of people, those who naturally respond to adversity with an optimistic explanation and those who respond pessimistically. He states (and has scientific evidence to back it up), that those who choose to see events in an optimistic way outperform their negative counterparts in test scores, sales, and even athletic performance (Achor 124). He gave a great anecdote to illustrate the styles: A lone gunman walks into a bank, fires one shot and leaves. It so happens that the one shot fired hit you in the arm. You’re ok. Now, how do you feel?
If your response is that you feel lucky to be alive, that no one else was hurt, relieved, blessed or something similar, congratulations you’ve probably already got an optimistic explanatory style. If you feel like you had the worst luck ever just by being in that bank at that moment, then you might have a pessimistic explanatory style. The good news is there’s a choice, and you can choose to adopt whichever style you want. This really stuck with me, because hey, who wouldn’t want to be 37% more successful like the insurance sales reps that I read about in the Happiness Advantage? That’s not fluff, but rather clear evidence for me to know I wanted to make a change.
The next morning, I was awake again at 4:45 and I decided to have a different conversation with myself than the one I’d had the previous day. Instead of bemoaning the fact that I couldn’t sleep, I decided to take the opportunity to get up and go for a walk. I downloaded a “Couch to 5k” app on my phone, turned on music and walked/ran for about an hour. You know what? Afterwards, I felt like a MILLION DOLLARS, and that positivity stayed with me for the whole day. So the next day, I had the alarm set for 5:00. I didn’t want to get up so I turned it off, but I woke up an hour later and went out again. The next day, I saw the sun rise at 5:30 and now here I am three weeks later and I simply CANNOT wait to get my running shoes on and head out the door at 5:00 every day. The switch for me was this: just because in the past I didn’t run, it didn’t mean that had to stay true for me forever. And just because I used to hate morning workouts didn’t mean I always would. I just had to look at that one 5:00am moment as an opportunity to try something again.
I think positive psychologists are really onto something we can use in our business. We hear all the time from clients who “don’t call churches because they won’t book group events” or who “can’t have great parties because moms won’t let us interact” and it makes me think, if that was true in the past (one time or even several), does it always have to be? What if it could be different? What if we decided to look at those kind of moments of rejection as opportunities to call upon different churches, or ask about fundraising events? What if we tried to set mom’s expectations earlier in the process so she knows interaction can be an amazing part of what we offer? What if we simply decided that one call or one mom would give us a great opportunity to try something new vs. believing that ‘we tried it, and it doesn’t work, and it’s awful’? Would we feel like a million dollars when it turns out positively? Would it be worth trying? I don’t know about you, but I’m willing to find out. Are you?
I would love to hear about your explanatory style, or your response to Shawn Achor’s book. It has already made such a difference in my life, and in our company. So drop us a line or meet me for my 5:00am run and we’ll watch the sunrise together.
