There’s nothing new about the concept of openness in its sense of being receptive to possibilities: we find the word used in this sense in Old English so we’re talking a long time.
I’ve recently become more attuned than before to the essence of that concept of openness . My curiosity was triggered after I had listened to Professor Barbara Fredrickson talking about her book Positivity. You can listen to her remarks here.
Her research identified a ‘tipping point’ of 3 :1 indicating that we can cope with negativity so long as each negative emotion is balanced by three positive emotions. But forcing ourselves to be positive can “backfire and lead to toxic insincerity”. She recommends, rather, that we “lightly create the mindset of positivity and that would be to be open, be appreciative, be curious, be kind but above all be real.”
In the penultimate chapter of her book, Barbara Fredrickson provides a toolkit of a dozen ways to increase positivity and decrease negativity. She invites her reader to initiate a study into “what works for you”. You can gauge how your positivity ratio is shifting, or not, by using as a yardstick an online positivity self-test. Recording this daily will show you how your ratio is shifting.
Her first tool is “Be open”.
Recently I was in Edinburgh just as an unusually early snowfall was disrupting transport and communication. I had a number of things to do within a limited time. I didn’t see this is a possibility and I was in Leith, about to miss what could be the only bus for some time. I was 150 metres from the stop, and passengers were already boarding, yet I started, half-heartedly to run. Half-heartedly because I was sure that even if the driver saw me in his rear view mirror, he would judge me to be too far to be worth waiting for. But the the bus was stationary, so I speeded up. He had been willing to wait. I felt surprised and appreciative so when I left the bus, I thanked him (a second time) for waiting for me, and said that being able to catch the bus had made a difference by reducing some of the pressure I’d been feeling. I noticed that he appreciated getting those few extra words of feedback. His appreciation lifted my mood.
But not for long. In Boots, the grumpiness was inflating again, as I found myself at the end of a long queue, so far behind its start that I had not even entered the queuing ‘pen’…when I realised someone else was taking hold of my basket, cheerfully offering to take it across to the beauty counter tills where there were no queues. I’m conscious this is going to sound touchy feely (yuk) but I’m going to persevere here.
That was all it took to switch off my negativity. Within the next hour, a further four people went at least a couple of extra inches for me, as I began to be so open to people being helpful that I somehow began to anticipate it. Perhaps you can imagine how my mood had shifted?
The “chores” I’d started off by not expecting realistically to be able to finish that day, were all completed within an hour and a half, notwithstanding snow, icy pavements, and a curtailed bus service.
So what am I getting at with this post? I can take no credit for slipping into the mindset that thinks, “Ha. Already there’s a problem. This is going to be one of those days”.
That it did not become one of those days had nothing to do with my mindset, but quite a lot to do with the bus driver and the beautician.
So, here’s my advice to myself, and to anyone else at that moment when you detect the suspicion that it’s going to be “one of those days”.
Be open to any evidence that your day’s not turning into “one of those days”. By becoming open to what is working, you make a choice that could well turn the day round.
It doesn’t even matter how trivial and insignificant this evidence seems in the scale of what you expect on “one of those days”. Let yourself be the teeniest bit open. Allow yourself to be generous in your search for anything that defies your negative expectations. The evidence doesn’t even have to be about you. It just has to be credible. And you just have to start.
“Hey, at least this is only a jam, not total gridlock. The washing machine didn’t flood. The newsagent’s cheerful this morning. I did once manage to lose weight. I have n’t despised every singleboss I’ve had.”
And as you de-catastrophise, and become open to what is working, rather than on the potential for further problems, you’ll perceive, perhaps only grudgingly, your mood lifting and the day’s outcome becoming more promising..