There’s a big temptation for many people at work and in relationships to put a ‘positive’ spin on things.
A lot of both professional and personal development work runs the risk of being ‘happy-clappy’ and of a ‘fist pumping in the air’ nature. Anyone that runs against the flow is ‘letting down’ the team.
A good news culture can be very dangerous. Realities can be glossed over and before we know it a business or a relationship is in trouble because no one wanted to speak out about what was really going on.
I have two Thought Leader colleagues in Australia, Rowdy McLean and Helen MacDonald who tell us we have to Get Real and be Optimists and not resort to dreamily and simply ‘looking on the bright side.’
The greatest stories canvas both the good times and the bad times, rags to riches stories, sad to happy, failure to success. They don’t edit the ups and downs out of the journey.
As great songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen says in his song Anthem, “Forget your perfect offering, there is a crack, a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”
News media and the advertising industry create some of the biggest stories on the planet through working the angles of good and bad, happy and sad, success and failure. They play with our flaws as humans, and we remember this because it strikes a chord of reality for us all.
It is the story of our flaws, our vulnerabilities, our mistakes as well as our successes that will inspire, be remembered and acted upon.