A short motivational talk by Brian Tracy advising listeners to shift their language to change mindset and behavior. He recommends replacing the negative word “problem” with neutral/positive alternatives — “situation,” “challenge,” or “opportunity” — and argues that this attitude (plus learning from failures) underpins leadership and long-term success.
A friend of mine has just written a book called Words can change your Brain, and what he has found, based on years of intensive work in neuroscience, is that certain words have tremendous impact on the way you think and feel, positive or negative. So part of this segment is to change your language for a positive outlook. For example, in flying, the word attitude refers to the angle or flight of your approach relative to the horizon. If you lower or raise the nose of the plane, you change the attitude of the plane. The way you think about a problem determines your attitude or approach as well. Here are three words that you can use to change your attitude and your approach to any difficulty you face. First of all, change the word problem to the word situation. Whereas problem is a negative word that triggers feelings of fear and anxiety, situation is a neutral word. So instead of saying we have a problem, you can say, we have a situation. My personal preference is to change the word problem to the word challenge. Whenever something goes wrong, immediately say, well, we have an interesting challenge facing us today. You see, challenge is a positive word. When you think of a challenge, you think of something that you rise to, something that brings out the best in you and others. Challenges are what make life exciting and worth living. By rising to the challenges of day to day life, you fulfill more and more of your potential. Perhaps the best word of all is opportunity. Instead of saying we have a problem, you can say, we have an unexpected opportunity. Napoleon Hill was famous for saying, every problem or difficulty you face contains the seed of an equal or greater advantage or benefit. Your job is to find the benefit. Look for the good in every situation. And this way of approaching a problem is determined by your attitude. The attitude of looking for the good in every situation, of looking for the advantage or benefit in any problem or difficulty, is the way that the most successful people think most of the time. Superior people, leaders in all areas face the inevitable ups and downs of daily life on the way to their destinations by taking complete control of their thinking and their emotions. And they do this by choosing the words they use to describe a situation, their tone of voice and their behavior in dealing with problems. A mark of maturity, a vital quality on the road to success and happiness and balance in life is expecting problems and difficulties as normal, natural and unavoidable parts of life. You can never avoid them. They come, as they say, like the waves of the ocean. Problems never stop. Becoming a superior person requires accepting that when you set off toward a big, exciting goal or destination, you will experience unexpected turbulence. One of the marks of leaders is they don't like to fail, but they know that they're going to fail over and over again on the road to success. Thomas J. Watson Sr. The founder of IBM, was once asked by a young journalist how he could be more successful faster. And he said, if you want to be more successful faster, he said, you must double your rate of failure. Success lies on the far side of failure. And the way that you succeed and fail and fail and succeed is learn from every experience. Look for the good. Call it a situation, a challenge, or an opportunity to keep your mind positive and creative as you work your way through it.
