Positive Thinking

When I was learning to ski, I hit every obstacle you could imagine. Skiers, trees, pylons - I could probably hit a helicopter overhead if I was having a bad day. As we skied through some trees (or rather, as my instructor skied around the trees and I skied into them), she asked me why I kept hitting them.

"I don't know", I said, "you're the instructor. You tell me."

She asked me, "Well, where are you focusing your attention?"

"On the trees!"

"Why?"

She had me there. "So I can avoid them, I guess..."

"Uh-huh. And how's that working out for you?"

Sarky cow.

From that moment on, I started to focus on the gaps between the trees. And I never hit another tree again. She was teaching me positive thinking, although I didn't realise it at the time.

It now amazes me how many of us go around focusing on the "trees". We become experts on the damn things, and blind ourselves to the gaps.

When you book a holiday, do you tell the travel agent all the places you don't want to go?

"Well, I definitely don't want to go to Kiev."

"OK sir, no problem, where do you want to go?"

"You see, they don't speak English, and the hotels are all grotty, and..."

"So where would you like to go, sir?"

"And the food sucks."

"Sir, could I ask you to wait to one side while I deal with the next customer? Thank you so much. Hello madam, where would you like to go?"

"Not Kiev, that's for sure..."

If we've got more common sense than to do this when we book holidays, why do we do it in business meetings? We all sit around saying "Yes, BUT" to the things we don't like, sniping away at each other, killing each other's ideas, blunting each other's imagination - and then we go home and ask the kids, "did you play nice with the other kids today?"

Tomorrow, see what happens when you say "Yes, and" to somebody's idea, instead of "Yes, but". And let us know how it goes.

PS. Kiev is actually very nice.