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CSIA FOCUS
Flex your positivity muscle In a world where fear sells and negativity grabs the headlines, it’s never been more important to flex our collective positivity muscle. Matthew Prowse, Customer Experience Director at one of Australia’s largest insurance companies, shares some practical examples to build a happier and more positive you, a more engaged team and more satisfied customers who will love your brand even more.
I watch a lot of news. I always have. However, now that I have two young children, I find I’m much more selective about when, where and how I consume it. The doom, gloom, terrorism and death. It’s everywhere, on every platform…and is it just me, or is it getting worse? Our brains are acutely primed to scan for potential threats. It’s part of our primal ‘fight or flight’ reflex. Rick Hanson, Senior Fellow of the Greater Good Science Center at University of California, Berkeley says: “two-thirds of neurons in the amygdala (part of the human brain) are geared toward bad news, immediately responding and storing it in our long-term memory… Good news, by comparison, takes 12 whole seconds to travel from temporary to long-term memory.” As international media fight for eyeballs and click-throughs… is it any wonder they are relentlessly focusing on the type of news that gets fast-tracked into our medial temporal lobe?
Good news travels fast… but bad news gets the clicks (and unfortunately stays with us much longer). Think about how this negativity is affecting us physiologically. According to Beyond Blue, 45% of Australians will experience a mental health condition in their lifetime and 1 in 6 Aussies will experience depression at some time in their lives.
How to restore balance But there’s some good news! Positivity, like a muscle in the body, can grow with discipline and becomes stronger through practice. It’s never been more important to flex our collective positivity muscles and help restore balance in ourselves, our families, our friends and our workplace. Positively engaged teams consistently outperform the norm; increased first call resolution, lower staff turnover, reduced absenteeism, improved work accuracy and as much as three times more creativity and innovation. Positivity is a genuine