Successful People Accentuate the Positive

Competence is one of the four keys to career and life success in my Common Sense Success System.  I also discuss it in some detail in several of my books: Straight Talk for Success; Your Success GPS; and 42 Rules to Jumpstart Your Professional Success.  If you want to succeed you need to develop four basic, but important competencies: 1) creating positive personal impact; 2) becoming a consistently high performer; 3) dynamic communication skills; and 4) becoming interpersonally competent. 

There are four key competencies that will help you become a career and life success:

  • You have to be able to create positive personal impact.
  • You have to be become an outstanding performer.
  • You have to be a dynamic communicator – in conversation, writing and presentations.
  • You have to build strong, lasting, mutually beneficial relationships with the important people in your life.

Positive habits are an important key to outstanding performance.  Healthy lifestyle habits will give you the stamina to become an outstanding performer.  Habits are like muscles.  The more you use them, the stronger they get.  Today, I’d like to discuss an important positive habits –proactively managing your stress.

When I was a kid about a million years ago, there was a popular song.  I believe it was a show tune.  A couple of the lines went like this…

You’ve got to ac – cen – tu – ate the positive, and
e — lim — in —  ate the negative

I don’t know the show.  If you do, please leave a comment letting us know.  I’ll give a free copy of one of my eBooks to everybody who knows the name of the show and shares it in a comment.

Anyway, I was thinking about that song yesterday because I came across a new book on stress management by Evelyn Brooks and called Forget Your Troubles: Enjoy Your Life Today.

Evelyn suggests that you get S.M.A.R.T. about managing stress…

• S     Smash the negative.
• M    Maximize the positive.
• A    Act.
• R    Relax.
• T    Target your next action.

As they say, “there’s nothing new under the sun.  And, more importantly, I agree.  It doesn’t matter if you accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative or smash the negative and maximize the positive, you’ll be on your way to managing your stress.

Stuff happens as you go through life; positive stuff, negative stuff, happy stuff, sad stuff, frustrating stuff.  The important thing is not what happens, but how you react to it.  In other words, smash the negative.  Don’t dwell on it, use it as a springboard to action and creativity.  Maximize the positive.  When something goes well, take the time to celebrate.  You deserve it.  And, a small celebration will put you in a positive frame of mind, which in turn, will help you create more positives in your life and career.

On Tuesday, I did a soft launch of my Common Sense Success System.  I’m gave away a free DVD – almost an hour and a half of my best thinking on career and life success – to the people on my ezine subscription list.  Today, I am making the same offer to you.  If you are interested in receiving this valuable DVD simply go to…

www.CommonSenseSuccessSystem.com/freedvdoffer.

I mention this offer because almost 100 people taken me up on it so far.  I’m celebrating.  I’m accentuating the positive, or if you prefer, maximizing the positive.  You might say that 100 people choosing to receive a free DVD is not reason for a huge celebration.  I understand. 

However, this is big for me, so I’m celebrating.  I’m seeing some positive movement in move on line business.  This free DVD is just the first step.  Celebrating small wins is a great way to manage your stress and to not get overwhelmed by the negatives that will invariably creep into your life.

The common sense point here is simple.  Successful people are competent.  They create positive personal impact.  They are outstanding performers.  They are dynamic communicators.  And they are relationship builders.  If you manage your stress you’ll be better able to perform at a consistently high level.  One way to manage your stress is to smash the negatives in your life and maximize the positives.  Use the negatives as learning experiences and the positives as reason for celebration.  Celebrating small victories is a good way to keep things in perspective and build the resilience necessary for dealing with the tough times.

That’s my take on accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative.  What’s yours?  Please leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

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Comments

  1. Donna Brown says:

    Four days ago I was thinking about a specific goal that I had in mind and then the thought came to me “What if I fail?” I knew that by focusing on the negative, it would bring negative results so I decided instead to think about the positive so I changed it to “What if I succeed?” I started by using the same inflection that I used when I said what if I fail. I sounded like I was afraid of success. Then I laughed and said it again and instead said enthusiastically, “What if I DO succeed? The truly amazing part was that after I said that, I started getting the answers that I knew would lead to success in this specific goal. Things that I wasn’t thinking about when I was asking myself ‘What if i fail.’What a paradigm!

  2. You’re right Donna:
    A small paradigm shift can mean everything.
    BB

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