How to highjack your Negative Nancy?

In general in life, when I'm trying to look for answers or information, I usually take a proactive approach. For example, you’d turn the packaging around to seek for the nutritional information in store before making your purchase decision, you’d rotate the wine bottle around to look for the producer location, you’d look at the back cover of a book to read the synopsis to pique your interest and get a sense of what this book is about, you wouldn’t just look at a job spec online, you’d go read the organisation’s website and get in touch with an ex-colleague of yours who you know has worked in this organisation in the past to gather various opinions in order to form your own. You wouldn’t just pick a holiday destination without reading a few reviews, blogs and online recommendations.

The Photographer Treat.

If you’re a keen photographer, you will have learnt to move around your subject, move your camera, or simply change the angle of your composition as opposed to wait until the conditions are all there in order to take the shot. You’d be here for ages otherwise. This really works. Every single time.

The Negative Nancy Trick.

However, we all do have these moments where a situation has triggered some really negative feelings. I can think of many at work and here I am - resentful, angry, stressed out, or quite negative about anything coming my way. Yup, my Negative Nancy has been turned on and it is quite difficult to talk her out of it. I wonder why that is? When it comes to situations triggering us, we don’t seem to adopt any of these approaches. We tend to get stuck with our interpretation of the situation which provides little to no alternatives. I have so many examples from work (my own and my clients’) starting from getting upset by a project that’s been rejected, to lacking confidence when presenting to the board. And we only focus on the negative elements, we don't seem to be able to look at anything else, let alone hear a different viewpoint.

Your mind is as amazing as you train it to be. Negative Nancy requires conscious work. Want to experiment with your mind? Let’s try a little experiment with the Cube Approach.

Think of a work situation that is triggering negative emotions in you (eg. anger, frustration…), a situation where you feel quite stuck with.

Place it inside a cube (a big imaginative 3D square, like the one above)

1.   Write on each side of the cube (don’t roll your eyes, it’s just 6 of them) the name of a person who is somewhat impacted by this situation.

• Bottom side 1: you
• Side 2: the organisation (e.g. your department)
• Side 3: someone from work - upwards
• Side 4: someone from work - e.g. a cross-functional team member
• Side 5: someone from your personal life – e.g. your partner
• Top side 6: a random person on the street you’d tell this story to.

2.   Inside this cube, looking at this situation up close from side 1 (in your face, you may even say):

• What are your thoughts about the situation?
• How does it make you feel?
• How does it impact you?

3.   Then move to each remaining side (2,3,4,5 and 6) and answer these questions:

• How would they see the situation from their position?
• What helpful question would they ask you?
• What helpful suggestion would they give you?

After doing this exercise, have you identified more insights about your work situation that was triggering you? What other options do you now see that you didn’t see before?

I'd love to hear how this little experiment has gone for you! Message me here: mleroux@startingblockscoaching.com

Speak soon!

Mags, your Leadership Coach

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