I was recently asked to work with a very interesting group, they were automotive mechanics across Australia that had won their state competition and were in Sydney to compete for the Australian title. As they were very skilled in diagnosing and fixing vehicles, the National Manager wanted me to work with them on how to stay positive whilst competing, with the winners going overseas to compete in the International Competition next month.
To help, I put together a High-Performance Mindset session that looked at what they could do to help set them up for success during the completion, as well as back at work. During the session, we had a great discussion around the voices that jump up in our heads whilst we are performing a task and how this can sometimes take us off track.
We all have an internal voice that will send us messages throughout the day. Sometimes these voices are positive, and other times they are negative. The challenge for many of us is to ensure that we focus on the positive voices and not listen to the negative ones. So how can you do that? Here are 3 techniques you can use to help keep the voices positive:
- Acknowledge any voices of doubt—then move on. Whenever you get a voice of doubt try not to just ignore it. This usually means it will keep coming up. A better strategy can be to acknowledge it but don’t dwell on it. Recognise that it has come up and then move onto something else.
- Get active and release any negative energy. If I look at where some of my negative thoughts or voices of doubts come from they are like little niggling ideas that swirl around in my head. One strategy to use is to physically move to release some of this negative energy. Go for a walk, a run a swim or something that gets you physically active. When we exercise through movement endorphins kick in that make us feel better.
- Remember self-fulfilling prophecy—what you focus on is what you create. Self Fulfilling Prophecy is when someone puts all their attention onto negative things. They get up feeling negative and continue to focus on the negative throughout the day. I believe that this attracts more negativity and unfortunately drags others into your negative spiral! Focus on what you can be appreciative of or what is going well. Look for these positive things and put the attention there.
So the next time you have some voices of doubt or negativity creep into your mind, remember these simple techniques. The more positive you are, the more your positive energy can spread to others and this can spread to make a positive impact to those around you!
If you would like to get a copy of my book Leadership Hacks: Clever shortcuts to boost your impact and results, please click here.
