The brain plays such a big part in why we do what we do.  Unfortunately, we are not always awake to what the brain is doing.

Coaching helps you be aware of the things you resist, or cannot “be with”.  And as you know, what we cannot “be with”, runs our life.

The bottom line”¦We retain the negative things, and dismiss the positive.  It’s time to break that habit, and hold on to the victories!

As they say in Tibet, if you can take care of the minutes, the years will take care of themselves. We can turn good moments into a great brain.

~Rick Hanson

Let’s talk about the so-called “negativity bias” of the brain, and what we can do to help your brains in your organization be happier, less stressed, and more effective.

As professional coaches, the one area we are particularly well-equipped to help our clients make lasting, positive changes in their brains is retraining the brain and turning negatives into positives for your organization.

To put it quite simply, the brain is designed to remember negative things more easily than positive ones. Big positive events like winning the lottery, an unexpected inheritance, your wedding are things you’ll never forget! Unfortunately for negative events, the brain is Velcro, for positive ones, Teflon.

The memory of something hurtful or scary goes into our long-term memories with ease. This goes back to the ancient caveman bias towards negativity helps us stay alive and avoid threats. Thus, in today’s world training our brain to be less attuned to the negative and more focused on the positive is a way to live a healthier, less stressful life. As coaches this training holds value beyond no price tag. Training our people to be fearless, and the positive benefits that fearlessness brings, creates leaders and people that can handle drama and turn that drama into gold!

 

Training Our Brains for Positivity

In order for a positive experience to make it into our long-term memory, we must:

  1. Hold positive training in our field of attention for at least 10-20 seconds
  2. Focus less on the negative and more on the positive
  3. Turn negatives into positives, every cloud has a silver lining
  4. Eliminate stress by fighting it with solutions or leaving it for greener pastures

The Impact of Coaching

  1. 1.    NOTICE or CREATE positives
  2. 2.    STAY WITH the experience, be with it that made me happy, remember why
  3. 3.    ABSORB the positive experience
  4. 4.    Prepare your staff for the bad experiences by lessening the blows

 

Coaching and Positivity

Business coaching’s whole profession is focused not on what’s wrong, but on what’s possible.  Teaching team members to have more of a positivity bias toward life and all its possibilities!

Not that we are naive about risks or problems, it’s finding the solutions in those problems. Salespeople are going to have bad calls, service people are going to take grief from unsatisfied customers and production staff is going to be overwhelmed.

How do we work together through these issues?

 

The business coaching profession is focused not on what’s wrong (we all know what’s wrong), but on what’s possible. What can we do to make it right to be more productive, positive and functional for all of us to experience the financial rewards. Through the process of one to one coaching, we also gain so much evidence that people can and do create amazing things for themselves through effort and intention. And of course, as we help our clients focus on the positive for that crucial 10-20 seconds (or more), it means we are strengthening the positivity circuits in our own brains.

“¦Changing a culture, solving problems by better equipping our brains to handle the situation and making changes for the better.