Recently, I had the opportunity to hear a young man speak on how to Outperform the Norm.
His name was Scott Welle and he speaks and coaches on developing skills that help you perform, in whatever way that means to you, at higher levels than you might think possible.
Scott is a highly trained athlete and he has found a way to share his success with others so they might find their own level of unexpected success.
During his talk, Scott shared that the average person has roughly 50,000 thoughts every day. About 80% of those thoughts are negative. For those of you who struggle with math like I do, that means that only 20% of the remaining thoughts are positive.
As he spoke these words it made me think of how much I wrestle with negative thoughts and how they hold me back. Well, no wonder! If four out of every five thoughts I have are negative that’s what I’m going to be drawn to!
Another thought that came to mind as Scott shared this point was about how I’m drawn to that one bad comment in an evaluation of a recent speaking gig when all the other comments are positive, encouraging and uplifting.
As I processed through this some more it brought me back to something I’d read recently in Mark Batterson’s book, “If.”
Batterson shared the results of a study done by the State University of New York at Buffalo on the relationship between perspective and satisfaction.
I don’t know if Welle would agree with me in connecting his comments with Batterson’s comments from his book but that is where my mind went so I’m doing it anyway.
In this study one group of subjects were asked to complete the following sentence:
I’m glad I’m not a _________________________________,
After the participants were asked to complete this sentence five times there was a measurable increase in their level of satisfaction.
Another group of participants were asked to complete this sentence:
I wish I were a ____________________________________.
In this case, each of the subjects experienced a dramatic decrease in levels of satisfaction.
This phenomenon is know as the “Contrast Effect.”
This takes a moment to process but in the first sentence the participants were looking at themselves positively in contrast to who or what they made the comparison.
In the second example, the participants are assessing themselves negatively to the comparison.
In essence it comes down to where we focus.
Granted four out of five of our thoughts are negative but one of them is positive. It is easy to focus on the four negative thoughts.
It takes courage and work to learn to filter through all the dirt and muck and grime to get to the one thought of gold.
I know I need to work in better developing my filter to find the nuggets.
Scott went on to say that our thoughts affect our actions which affect our behaviors.
Those that outperform the norm play to win. The norm plays not to lose.
Do you have the courage to filter through the junk to find the gold?
Proverbs 14:23-34
Have a STRONG and COURAGEOUS day!
