Vol. 55, No. 11 — November 1974 —
On Being Positive
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Positive and negative are words
far apart in their meaning and implications. The territory
between them is the jousting arena where the success or failure
of every business enterprise is determined and the happiness
or misery of lives decided.
Victory tends to favour the contestants who tilt under the
positive banner. They are people who have trained themselves
to think "What action am I going to take?" instead of "What
is going to happen to me?"
Coping with the enterprises and satisfying the desires of
your life involves finding out what you have to do in order
to become what you want to be, and then doing it. You need
to know what tools and skills you have and how to use them
to the best effect. If fate has been unkind in failing to
give you a high education, that need not keep you out of the
business or social tournament: you will do the best you can
with what learning you have, and brace yourself to acquire
more. Such a positive attitude makes the difference between
carrying off the prize and retiring to sulk in your tent.
Charles Darwin held the opinion, as the result of a lifetime
of critical observation, that men differ less in capacity
than in zeal and determination to utilize the powers they
have.
Being positive is an element in initiative, which is the
ability to think of and do new things. Some persons stumble
over opportunities as if they were obstacles, but positive
people seek the plus values.
An example of substituting a positive thought for a negative
is provided by the discovery of penicillin. "Many bacteriologists
had seen that cultures of microbes are spoiled when exposed
to molds, but all they concluded was that molds must be kept
out of such cultures. It took a stroke of genius to see the
medicinal promise of the basic observation." This comment
was made by Dr. Hans Selye in an essay on basic research in
Adventures of the Mind (Alfred A. Knopf, 1959).
This example shows also that it does not take much to turn
things in your favour. Noticing trifles, observing their nature,
and connecting thought about them with knowledge already stored
in your mind, produces new ideas. Shakespeare heard talk about
a small coral island, and on this hearsay erected his magnificent
fantasy of The Tempest.
Enthusiasm is constructive
All of the progress of civilization is due to the constructive
thinking of people. The record of history is brilliant with
the deeds of men and women who said "I can", while it is silent
for the most part concerning those who said "I can't". Positive
people believe that it is better to fail in carrying out a
project than to not fail because they have not tried.
Enthusiasm is a necessary ingredient in doing a job successfully.
Great works are often performed not by strength but by perseverance.
Ideally, the artist, the scientist, the business man, the
inventor and the writer are moved by such an irresistible
impulse to create something that far from striking for higher
income and shorter hours they are willing even to pay for
the chance to bring forth something new.
They know that taking the easy way of inaction is not nearly
so interesting as tackling and conquering a difficulty. They
examine very closely projects that people declare to be impossible.
There are few triumphs so satisfying as to plan a piece of
work that everybody says cannot be done, and then jump in
and do it. Usually, one finds the power to accomplish any
task of which one's reason approves.
Know your objective
Life will be drab and meaningless to those who do not set
certain goals and commit themselves to seeking to reach them.
If one takes a negative attitude; viewing life as a torrent
without form or purpose in which one has no future, one has
nothing to hope for or to work for.
We need to link ourselves to purposes which really attract
us and are consistent with our abilities and our rules of
conduct.
This requires that we pick the right thing in life as our
measure of success. Then all else will be relative to it,
plus or minus, positive or negative. We shall apply our thinking
emphasis to what is important and essential, and thus avoid
substituting secondary aims for primary values.
The desire for something is more than simple willingness
to receive. It is positive, purposeful, energetic and creative.
It is powered by your initiative and energy and perseverance,
and all these are positive forces. You keep your eye on where
you want to go.
Wise people make their own future. They give themselves
heart and soul to something beyond the satisfaction of today's
wants. They do not give credence to fate and destiny and waves
of the future. Those are abstract things. Instead, they consider
the ways in which to determine their own future right now.
A belief in predestination may be a cowardly escape from the
responsibility of making a positive decision and doing a positive
action.
Prudent planning
A design is needed. Without a plan, all our little bricks
of reconstruction might just as well remain in the brick-yard.
Chains of consequences do not always follow the pattern we
lay out, but it is just as well to start them in the right
direction.
Planning has preservation value. People who seem most balanced
and most efficient in difficult situations are probably people
who have figured out the very worst that can happen and what
to do if it does happen. We should bear in mind Father Duncan's
admonition in the Scottish historical novel by Elizabeth Byrd,
The Flowers of the Forest: "Be prudent in your prayer
lest it be answered."
A creative person does not follow rules slavishly, although
he needs to know them. Shakespeare departed from the rules
of drama and Tintoretto from the rules of art with some success.
One must sometimes take a leap without seeing what is on the
other side of the wall. That means saying: "To the best of
my lights at this moment this is what I choose to do, even
though I may know more and choose differently tomorrow."
Disorder in action or thought is a handicap to advancement
and therefore negative. Keep simple everything that it is
possible to simplify. Complexity of system or equipment is
a minus quality adding weariness to work. Most practical business
men will admit that bureaucracy has saddled them with too
much paperwork. It remained for the President of Romania to
show them the cure. He decreed a fifty per cent cut in paper
supplies for offices.
Making a decision
A person may go through his allotted span of life without
once being confronted by a large question the decision of
which will change his future, but everyone is required to
decide about puzzling matters every day.
There are options open. When you come to a fork in the road
and must decide what to do you have four choices: you may
sit down, you may step out on this or that of the diverging
paths, or you may turn your back on the problem and go home.
The thing to do is to find out enough about each option
so that you are in position to reach a reasonable decision.
Ask questions of whatever guide-books you have, of people
who pass by, and of the data on the signboard. If you have
your notebook with you, set out the "for" and "against" of
each possible course.
On the whole (there are exceptions to every rule of behaviour)
it is wiser to make decisions promptly and crisply than to
linger over them and lose momentum. Holding up a decision
while awaiting facts that are necessary to wise thought is
different from indecision due to reluctance to decide. A scientist
seeking the answer to a life-and-death problem may properly
defer final judgment until all the evidence is in, but in
the meantime he may tell his tentative conclusions based on
the state of his knowledge.
No one can become dominant in his field unless he does independent
thinking, comes to his own decisions, checks them for their
accuracy, and acts upon them. People who hesitate between
being positive or negative are in an unfortunate position.
By remaining in the middle of the road they incur the danger
of being run over by both lanes of traffic instead of by only
one.
The person who wishes to make decisions with confidence
needs to keep in mind the fact that knowledge is the bed-rock
upon which judgment must rest. Skills in deciding are developed
through practice and through relating things newly learned
to one's acquaintanceship with facts and principles.
He is a fortunate person whose mind is filled with energizing
high-pressure TNT thoughts, but they did not come by
chance. He collected them or formed mental images of them,
and put them into stock. One cannot apply techniques effectively
while ignoring the more arduous task of acquiring facts and
resolving abstract ideas into concrete examples.
Most people who are placed in positions where they must
think judicially seek to find a specific rule instead of trying
specific cases by general rules. It is an affront to use generalities
when particulars are available, but a person will deal more
constructively with individual cases when he is acquainted
with general rules.
The first distinguishing characteristic of straight thinking
is facing the facts. When you are explicit, and differentiate
between what you know and what you do not know but merely
take for granted, you avoid the vagueness in which many people
live.
We are constantly urged to be objective in our thinking,
but if we sit on the fence, never committing ourselves, and
never giving a decision, we live an unrewarding sort of life.
Doing nothing has consequences just as surely as doing something
has.
Hopeful but discreet
We can never tell when Fortune is just around the corner,
so why not live with a sense of expectancy? In a chapter of
The Power of Positive Thinking (Prentice-Hall Inc.,
1952) in which he quoted a Royal Bank Monthly Letter, Dr.
Norman Vincent Peale said: "No good thing is too good to be
true."
A constructive attitude is needed. No bright idea and no
good work arises out of a negative, fault-finding mind. The
sad complaint is sometimes heard: "We can't change the world".
That may be true (although we may be able to improve a small
part of it) but we do not have to give in and join the deteriorating
elements in it.
There is no satisfaction for a healthy mind in everlastingly
denouncing things. As Confucius said, "It is better to light
one small candle than to curse the darkness." A pessimist
is one who takes delight in condemning what he considers to
be undesirable without doing anything to remedy it. He makes
negatives of his opportunities, whereas the optimist makes
positives of his difficulties by asserting his dominance over
them.
Of course, being positive does not mean rushing your jumps,
expecting everything that is good to happen immediately. Patient
people, and people who feel their way carefully, are positive
so long as they are advancing even slowly. There are times
to doubt: then the positive person investigates and by investigation
comes to the truth.
It is positive action when you admit that something is strange
to you and beyond your present understanding. Children provide
us with an example. They accept many episodes in life as being
frankly beyond them. They do not make a fuss or seek psychiatric
aid when they fail to fit all that they encounter into accustomed
categories of meaning and significance.
Time to think
In every person's career, a change, a pause, a break, is
necessary from time to time, to enable him to understand his
life, assess current happenings, and weigh his progress toward
attainment of his long-term expectations.
Meditation has two aspects: it may be devoted to fostering
an ideal that will transform and guide our lives, or it may
be merely brooding on one's self as seen in the trivialities
of day-to-day living. An ivory tower is a good place to go
to prepare yourself for action, to think things through, to
gather strength. What is saddening about the concept of the
ivory tower is that it has become the symbol of withdrawal
without return.
Retiring to a quiet place, free from distracting sights
and sounds, may be made a source of directed energy. It was
all very well to be told in our childhood years about sitting
in front of the fire and imagining things and seeing visions,
and having ideas. The trouble is that thoughts are likely
to fly up the chimney and become lost. We find it more rewarding
in these days to sit at a table with pencil and paper so as
to trap our thoughts for examination.
Some concrete procedure is always necessary in the face
of trouble. Common sense tells us to disbelieve in the commonly-held
hope that if you ignore a problem it will go away. That is
as silly as taking a candle to read a sun-dial at bedtime.
The positive person is one who not only senses when something
is wrong but has the patience and fortitude to find the right
answer to the problem, or perhaps even just a good answer,
and give it effect.
We often talk about being caught on the horns of a dilemma.
A dilemma is a situation entailing a choice between two equally
distasteful alternatives. When so caught, analyse your situation.
Are the alternatives mutually exclusive, and do they between
them exhaust the possibilities?
To assume a negative attitude toward a problem that you
have not yet examined in this way is unprofitable. Define
the situation. Apply known principles and methods to the solution.
Do not look for contradictions where there are none. Hot and
cold, light and dark, good and bad, strong and weak: these
are not opposites but degrees and varieties. Solution of a
problem, settlement of an argument, and determination of a
course are often found in the golden mean, "the happy medium".
There are people, many of them well-educated, who are constitutionally
against things. The person starting some new thing or proposing
some fresh way of looking at something may find the starch
taken out of his effort by fear of what such people will say.
Someone will arrive at a committee meeting with wads of paper
covered with notes about why the change cannot be made or
the new idea developed. Such critics are, as Professor Edgar
Dale wrote in one of his Ohio State University News Letters:
"Tied up in Nots". They have their minds made up before learning
any of the facts necessary to an intelligent conclusion.
How often, when you ask a person what he stands for, he
does not tell you affirmatively, but reels off a lot of things
he is against, like bilingualism or unilingualism, fluoridation,
smoking, highway speeding, the government, and the like.
It is sensible to be against things like slavery,
pollution, disease and sin so long as we are for something
that will make these things impossible or alleviate them.
Fear and frustration
Treat a fear positively. Get to know its cause: if it is
real, do something about it: if it is unjustified, banish
it. When people learned that the earth was round they ceased
to fear falling over the edge.
One of life's great triumphs arises from the ability to
meet fear and frustration positively. We must expect to endure
our full quota of frustrations. They are a normal part of
daily living, like sand traps on a golf course.
Making a mistake is part of the learning process, and everyone
is wrong some of the time if he does anything at all. When
you are wrong it is noble to admit it, to redress willingly
and speedily what has been done amiss. Making excuses is an
unprofitable occupation.
"If" is a negative word. We hear so many men and women lamenting
their lack of progress and happiness by its use: "If I had
a new car; if I were 20 years younger; if I had a better education;
if I had a decent boss; if I had better health." They hope
to weather their sense of failure by refusing to acknowledge
that they have any responsibility for it.
Dealing with people
How much easier it is to reach agreement on an issue when
we look for the similarities in viewpoints rather than the
differences; the positives rather than the negatives.
Every person writing a business letter can profit by always
putting statements positively. Make definite assertions. Avoid
tame, hesitating, non-committal language. If you must deny
something your customer says or refuse something he wants,
do not merely say "no". You are under obligation to propose
something to be substituted.
Before entering upon an argument, decide whether it matters.
The positive approach to an argument is to think carefully
about the end desired: listen, concede, be moderate, cite
your authority, and leave the door ajar for your opponent
to come over to your side without losing face.
Praise when possible. Appreciation and praise are positive
values when they are real and hearty. It is an honourable
thing, and just, to show appreciation of what someone has
accomplished, and to commend him gracefully. It shows that
you have learnt to know what is excellent.
There is a sort of hardshell "realism" which insists upon
looking at the facts of life alone, taking no account of ideals
or of the people involved. "It is characteristic of the barbarian,"
says Richard M. Weaver in Ideas Have Consequences,
(University of Chicago Press, 1948) "whether he appears in
a pre-cultural stage or emerges from below into the waning
day of a civilization, to insist upon seeing a thing 'as it
is'. The desire testifies that he has nothing in himself with
which to spiritualize it; the relation is one of thing to
thing without the intercession of imagination."
Having an ideal
An ideal is the highest product of the imagination. It may
be out of reach: it is, nevertheless, a necessary point at
which to aim. An illustration is: "Be such as you thought
executives ought to be before you rose to this eminence."
Anyone's sense of what is good and valuable and desirable
must take account of his environment and his individual brand
of human nature. A sense of value is a positive motive power.
It is true that it imposes on life many labours, but without
it we should sink back into the negativism of lower types
which are given the right to live and desire nothing else.
To talk of "rights" is to talk negatively, for rights can
only organize resistance. Duty is positive. Among the positive
actions to which we are obliged to pay attention are: to maintain
ourselves and our families in health and comfort; to pay our
debts; to increase our prosperity by increasing our efficiency.
The person who practises this positive-oriented way of living
is not accommodating himself to the ills of society, trying
to make the best of them, but is constructing his life on
a sense of values that places the trivia of daily life in
manageable perspective.
Thinking and doing
One must think. It is better to be intelligent than clairvoyant.
It is more intelligent to be guided by one's mind than by
distant stars.
Only through thinking can you excavate your talent and put
it to use. A man who was asked if he could play the piano
was quite truthful when he replied: "I don't know: I never
tried."
Positive effort and clear thinking can beget results that
bear the mark of genius, which is the aptitude for producing
excellent thoughts or things.
When thought has generated a reasonable plan, it should
be carried into action. Men and women cannot save their humanness
or contribute to civilization by existing as non-participating
spectators of life. Passivity is negative.
A decision or a plan made and not acted upon is futile.
Hesitation is the fatal flaw in the make-up of many men and
women. Napoleon said that the reason for failure of otherwise
good generals was their inability to seize the right moment
for action. Even to make a small start is positively beneficial.
William James, psychologist and philosopher and one of the
founders of Pragmatism, said: "If we wish to conquer undesirable
emotional tendencies in ourselves we must assiduously, and
in the first instance cold-bloodedly, go through the outward
movements of those contrary dispositions which we prefer to
cultivate."
Being positive means shifting your thoughts from the things
that are against you and focusing them on the vast power that
is for you. And having made up your mind to do something positive,
spare no pains: do it thoroughly and well. It is the use we
make of our capacities that determines the success of our
efforts.
Give life to your positive ideas. Every person is, regarding
his own life, like the leader of an orchestra: inspiring,
guiding, restraining, co-ordinating, interpreting the manifold
qualities of his being. He has stature. He believes in himself.
Published by RBC Financial Group. All editions from the RBC
Letter collection are available on our web site at www.rbc.com/responsibility/letter.
Our e-mail address is: rbcletter@rbc.com.
Publié aussi en francais.
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