It can be tough to keep a positive mindset when things are going wrong. When you’re feeling down, it’s natural to want to share your negative thoughts with others.
But what if you could teach your kids or team how to have a positive mindset in the face of difficulty?
It might seem impossible, but it’s not!
With a few simple steps, you can help them learn how to persevere and stay positive through anything life throws their way.
How to teach a positive mindset
How do you teach your kids or your team to have a positive mindset? When I look back, there have been lots of times when one of our kids was really down or someone on the team went through a tough time.
We’ve all met people like that. You can probably think right now of someone you know who really needs a shot of positivity.
They need the ability to see things differently.
In our family, and by the way, it works for teams at work, too.
We started using this concept called “what does this make possible?”
Here’s how it works. When bad things happen, that is usually the turning point for someone to have a negative mindset.
Most people dwell on that and it makes them stay in that rut or place.
They can also take a different view and ask, “Alright, that stinks, but what does this make possible?”?
How negative moments can turn into possibilities
I think the best example I can give you is Markus, our oldest son, who got the opportunity to go to China and study Mandarin and martial arts.
To be able to go, he worked for it for over two years.
He had to take a bunch of classes in advance and get his teachers, his principal, and school to sign off.
So he’s in China and he’s having an amazing time.
Then he made a bad decision that led to him hurting himself and smashing his fingers.
Next thing you know, he’s in a Chinese hospital and then another one.
Following, the Marshall arts place he was in said, “Hey, if you’re hurt you can’t practice martial arts, therefore, we’re gonna have to end your time there”.
Then good friends of ours picked him up and took him back to Hong Kong.
They made that really tough call to me, that I would have to fly over to China, to take him home.
So for a young man, with all this, you know, preconceived notions of what this trip was going to be, when it all came crashing down, he thought it was over.
He was down in the dumps and had that negative mindset. So, I got on a plane.
I wasn’t too excited about flying for 24 hours to get him and bring him back a month earlier than he had planned on returning.
At that moment, it hit me that, what if what happened to him made all these other things possible?
Learn how to develop a team attitude within your family or workplace.
How the mind transitioned from negative to positive thinking
When I got there, he was beating himself up enough already. That stinking thinking had already set in. That’s why I just had to change his mindset to what does this make possible?
What can you do with two months left before summer and no school when you go home?
While we were in China, we decided Markus would travel with me, since he had extra time and the teacher and the principal had already signed off on everything
As a result, he started traveling with me to every mastermind, every speaking event, and he started meeting people while seeing what the world had to offer.
It changed what he wanted to do with his life and radically changed his mindset.
A couple of months later, he was the poster child for telling the truth while helping his siblings or anyone he met that was in a bad spot or had made a bad decision.
How to keep thriving with a positive mindset
What does this now make possible? Afterward, he looked back and said he’s glad that happened, otherwise he wouldn’t have traveled with me.
Ultimately, he would not have met the people he met and would not be on the path or journey he is on now.
Everything changed because he had a completely different mindset about what happened to him.
When you’re thinking about mindset, when you’re thinking about changing someone’s mindset, stop and think about how they got there and then ask them, “What does this now make possible?”.
They might find that they have access to a whole new world after a bad thing happened to them, just like Markus.