New way to better resilience and health....

Today's Post: Friday, 2-10-2012

We start with this:

Many people already know that if you think right towards other people, you’ll get all kinds of good results.

They’ll cause you less stress. You’ll spend less time arguing and be more likely to find solutions to difficulties. You’ll be more likely to be hired when you apply for a job. Other people be more likely to help you when you need it. You’ll spend a lot less time being angry or upset with people. You’ll be more persuasive when it counts most. You’ll be more likely to have a good relationship or marriage and have it last.

These are huge and postive, even life changing effects.

Overall your life will be dramatically better.

You’ll be less stressed physically and less often, and because of that we now know your telomeres on your DNA will be longer and you will age more slowly.

I got lucky and learned this skill in several places.

a) Author David Schwartz wrote the hype-y sounding but profoundly valuable book, The Magic of Thinking Big. I read it. In it he recommends what he calls “Thinking right towards people.”

It’s not that complicated when you see it explained. When you are about to meet someone or are with them, you can remember and even amplify to yourself one of two sets of things.:

You can think about what you dislike about them and remember when they acted that way. You can assume they are permanently that way and that will be how things always will be.

Or you can think about and remember what you like about them or respect about them and their strengths and what you have in common and be willing for them to be less than perfect without forgetting what you like about them and that they may do better in the future.

He gives specific examples how thinking the first way causes horrible results because the other person can sense how you are thinking and feeling about them.

And, he gives specific examples of how thinking the second way usually gets good results and can even turn a bad situation into an OK one.

b) In Dale Carnegie’s books he quotes one of his most successful students as saying he always gives people he has issues with the benefit of the doubt and tries to see the legitimate reasons they feel as they do and why. He said that he found he avoided making things worse every time he did this and was far more successful in turning the situation around. He said that sometimes this didn’t work. But the longer he did this, the less often that happened.

c) Studies found that in marriages that last, both people knew the real strengths of the other person, remembered them, and valued the other person for them.

d) Did you know that if you apply for a job and they ask why you left your last job, if you totally bad mouth the people you worked with, the person interviewing you will stop the interview and say you’ll not be considered?

Practical experience has shown employers that people who see the strengths of the people they work with and forgive them their weaknesses will work well with their other employees and do a better job. But worse, people who miss those strengths and make trouble for the people who they work with who aren’t perfect or who catch them at a bad time, will cut the productivity of everyone they work with.

So, as you can see, doing these things and learning to become good at them, is a huge asset and can benefit you enormously.

But I found out a few days ago, all this is just the tip of the iceberg and maybe only a third of its value!

It seems that when you habitually treat other people this way, you multiply your OWN ability by as much as a factor of ten!

Without realizing it, you treat yourself better too! You get so used to this way of thinking, you begin to do it with yourself also!

You find the people around you automatically treat you better to reciprocate which helps you think of yourself better as well.

You begin to see your own strengths better and give yourself credit for them. You then are more likely to see ways to use them to achieve your goals. You begin to stop over-reacting when you make a mistake and realize you can do better next time.

It seems that new research verifies this.

I read it in this Scientific American article.:

“What You Need to Succeed and How To Find Out If You Have It By Ingrid Wickelgren Scientific American Weds, 2-8-2012”

In the article they point out that people who are more hopeful, confident, resilient, and optimistic are much better getting things done and achieving their goals.

They repeat the findings of other research that shows people who are high in this set of things get better results in almost everything. Martin Seligman, PhD found that such people have more friends, have much better health, and make more money than people who are very low. The Scientific American article added that such people tend to stay married more often and live longer.

But how do prospective employers test for this?

People may not know themselves. Peter Drucker once pointed out that people who are extremely good at things find them so easy they often don’t realize those things are hard for other people.

Or other people may deliberately overstate how good they are.

So how can employers measure this accurately?

You just read about it! They can measure how you think about other people. That turns out to be close to 100 % accurate.

“New research suggests that your own ability to get things done not to mention your success in non-work relationships is highly correlated with how you see others. Are your coworkers capable and kind, or are they, dare I say, incompetent jerks?”

Peter Harms, a psychologist and management scholar at University of Nebraska-Lincoln and University of Nebraska management scholar Fred Luthans decided:

“Rather than using real people, some of whom may actually be jerks, they asked subjects to conjure up imaginary people, on whom they could impose their own… mindsets. The result is a world they have completely made up.”

They had people describe characters in job situations that they made up themselves and then answered these questions about those people.

“Is he feeling confident and self-assured in his ability? Does she believe she can bounce back from setbacks? Does he believe he can accomplish his goal? Does she expect good things to happen in the future?”

People who always think right towards people tended to be pretty positive about their imaginary people.

But they also were dramatically higher on these traits themselves.

In real life they did their work and finished it well. They helped and were an asset to other employees.

They rarely caused avoidable problems on the job.

The article then goes on to give several specific examples of how Thinking right towards people tended to produce better results in the workplace and how doing the reverse tends to destroy productivity.

It seems that David Schwartz’s original advice was correct.

Always make a special effort to think right towards people until it becomes a habit.

It always pays to do so.