“What you focus on gets bigger” has been echoed from spiritual masters to neuroscientists to cultural creatives, (Click below to see where George Harrison took this idea). At this point in time, the concept has evolving applications to the workplace. It can shift staff morale and break unproductive patterns.
Expressed a different way, your thoughts manifest into your reality and your reality reinforces your thoughts. So as a leader, what are you focusing on? For example, if you are aggravated that your team doesn’t work well together, chances are you have become conditioned to zero in on only the negativity. What if you were to take a week (as an experiment) and look exclusively at when they actually get on well? Knowing what is working gives you a balancing perspective. Expressing recognition for the observed positives provides a starting point for building healthier communication – whether it’s done via team building, group coaching or an employee retreat. You also might find that it lowers your stress.
Making a choice to focus on an affirmative aspect of your own experience is another application of how to employ “what you focus on gets bigger.” Everyone has situations where they feel ill equipped and lose confidence. Many of us struggle with the judgments that arise from those situations, so that our heads fill with constant repeating monologues like:
“I never have anything of value to say in the management meetings”
“I don’t have what it takes to really motivate my people.”
Again we get conditioned to only see the negative. Our brains do this as a way to protect us from worse case scenarios. The problem is such thinking makes us more prone to falling into ruts or even worse, continually operating from a place of scarcity where we think it just can’t get better.
One way to handle this from within is to appoint an internal observer. Notice when you are focusing on what you don’t want or your ANTS (Automatic Negative Thoughts.) At this point you don’t need to get caught up in them, just see their pervasiveness. One clue to note is that when you feel anxious or pessimistic, chances are that is the signal your thoughts are shifting into the negative. By the way, this doesn’t mean they are true, it means that your thoughts are out of alignment with your higher aspirations for yourself or what you’d like to see for your organization. After becoming conscious of your ANTS, shift into giving yourself a positive theme. It might be to become aware of productivity—of how much you actually do get done in a day. Another might be to focus on collaboration—noticing any and all instances of working with another person, even if it’s just to take turns using the microwave at lunch.
Deliberately and mindfully spending some time in what is going well versus what is wrong balances the negative bias of the brain and allows you to see things for what they really are—which makes it a whole lot easier to move into constructive shifts.