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Am I Really a Positive Person?
Nobody thinks they are the negative one. You can be a warm, generous, well-liked person and still be running a negative operating system underneath, several times a day, for years.
About the Book
Think of the last thing that went wrong this week.
Now recall the first full sentence that formed in your head about it. That sentence is your mindset. Not your intentions. Not your self-image. The sentence.
Positivity is not a temperament. It is a set of habits running underneath the temperament: what you notice first, what you say when something goes wrong, what you replay at two in the morning.
Your life is shaped less by what happens to you than by the sentences you use to describe what happens to you. Change the sentences and you change what you notice. Change what you notice and you change what you do.
This book works on language rather than on feelings, for a practical reason: feelings are hard to grab, and sentences sit still long enough to be examined.
What follows is not blind positivity. Blind positivity is a way of lying quietly. This is something harder and more useful.
The Spine of the Book
Four words do most of the damage.
They turn up in the argument you lose, the decision you avoid, the worry you circle, the grief that will not lift, the message you should not have sent, and the habit that collapsed in week two. Every chapter names which one is operating, and what to put in its place.
Cancels the clause before it. The listener keeps only the second half, however sincere the first half was.
Converts a behaviour into a character. People do not negotiate with verdicts. They defend against them.
A prediction wearing the clothes of history. It is also the native language of worry.
Shrinks whatever it touches. Heard as contempt even when contempt was never meant.
What You Will Gain
Tools small enough to survive a bad week.
Reading this book will interest you. Writing in it will change you. Every chapter ends with a reflection you can finish in five minutes.
- The four words that quietly run your life. Find them, and learn what to put in their place.
- A method for conflict that fits in ten seconds. The Five S’s, in order, when the temperature rises.
- A way to decide that starts from strength. The SOWT tool, and the push-versus-pull question underneath it.
- Something to do with worry. Turn a vague fear into one small action, today.
- Language for the hard seasons. Sadness and loneliness, met honestly rather than managed away.
- Humour as a tool, not a decoration. How lightness makes weight carryable.
- A digital voice you are not ashamed of. What to type when someone comes at you online.
- A daily practice small enough to survive a bad week.
You cannot always control your circumstances. You can always choose your mindset.
Change the sentence and you change what you notice.
You are not an observer of your life. You are its author.
What Is Inside
A mirror first, and a map second.
A 20-statement self-assessment, scored, so you can see which sentences you are already running.
The four words, the Five S’s for a rising conversation, standing your ground under attack, and what to type online.
Deciding from confidence, worry that will not resolve, sadness, loneliness, and humour as counterweight.
Building a practice of two habits rather than fourteen, and the sentence you leave behind.
The Daily Positivity Action Checklist, plus a full bibliography of the research behind each chapter.
Before You Buy
This book is not for everyone.
Read this if
- You carry the bad ten percent of a good week home with you.
- You want to know what you actually say when something goes wrong.
- You are willing to write, not only to read.
- You would rather build two habits that last than fourteen that do not.
Do not read this if
- You want affirmations without evidence.
- You are looking for permission to feel good about everything.
- You want to be told your circumstances are the problem.
- You are in deep grief or crisis, where this is a companion to professional care and not a substitute for it.
From the Book
A department head named Gil told me, in the first minute of our conversation, that he was known as the optimist of his floor. He was not exaggerating. People liked him. He remembered birthdays. Then I asked him what had gone wrong that week, and what the first sentence in his head had been.
Gil was not a fraud and he was not unhappy. His temperament was genuinely warm. His operating system was not, and the two had been running side by side for so long that neither had ever noticed the other.
Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions.
Instant download. The self-assessment is in the first chapter.