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Negativity slows creativity.

I’m not talking about push back, I’m talking about consistent negativity around a situation. In a recent article on Miles Davis, Fast Company was quoted encouraging readers to

“Expand the Vocabulary of Yes to Overcome the Glamour of No.”

That is brilliant and beautiful.

We risk creating blocks to our creative thought and process when we allow ourselves to get stuck in a negative mindset.

Have you ever found yourself wishing?

• “In a perfect world…”
• “If she/he would just let me…”
• “If they had done what they had said…”
• “If I was on that team…”

This kind of thinking is fuel for creative shut down. We have to change our approach. The same Fast Company article went on to say:

“…do what jazz greats do: assume that you can make the situation work somehow, that there exists an opportunistic possibility to be gleaned. This is an affirmative mind-set — the assumption that a positive pathway will be found, that there’s a potential to be noticed and pursued.”

Being negative or always cynical is easy. But what if we started to criticize by creating? What if instead of being problem finders we committed to being problem solvers? What if instead of cynicism we could create a culture of change and opportunity? Because really, at the end of the day, we’re all on the same team and striving for the same thing – it’s just a matter of how we’re going to get there. Overcome the desire to look right and feed negativity and remember that “equating cynicism with realism shrinks the imagination.”

How do you leverage these opportunities to shift from negativity to positivity?