Social awkwardness, shyness: most of us have experienced such feelings at one time or another. In a recent post, I drew upon the unusual America’s Got Talent performance of Courtney Hadwin to illustrate how an immersion in our talents can transform us, making us “a different person.” In her performance zone, Courtney is able to do something more than simply overcome her reticence: she finds her assertive, empowered voice.
The implications for performance psychology are significant. It is one thing to cope with our frailties; quite another to channel them through our strengths to achieve unique heights. Yes, we can use psychological techniques to reduce our negative emotional experience. But could it be that, in directly facing our greatest negatives, we find our distinctive positives?
In my work with traders and portfolio managers in financial markets, I’ve seen most of the negatives that interfere with optimal performance. That includes, not only the classic fear and greed, but also frustration, overexcitement, boredom, and pessimism. Invariably these are viewed as problems to be overcome. As a result, traders focus on their problems and lose sight of their strengths and successes. If Courtney came onto the stage to be a less nervous singer, she would be mediocre at best. She makes her way to Champions by becoming a different kind of singer: one that lies on the other side of her “weakness”. The trader prone to frustration (and frustrated decision-making) can try to be a less agitated money manager–or could learn to become frustrated with his or her agitation and use the negative experience to double down on the positive motivation to stay market-focused and clear-minded. It is when we are most in touch with the negatives–and most distressed by them–that we can find the motivation to discover and maximize our positives.
Indeed, if we don’t use our most negative emotional experiences for positive transformation, all we’ll be left with is pain.
Recent writings and research in positive psychology suggest that there indeed are benefits to our negative emotions. As the Positive Psychology Program site notes, negative emotions can be motivators and can become powerful prods for mindfulness. For example, fear of consequences and vivid memories of past failures can help an alcoholic recognize and avoid urges to drink that might otherwise lead to relapse. Even more dramatically, those negative experiences can channel the alcoholic’s motivation toward helping others in support groups, transforming antisociality into very prosocial outcomes.
I was socially reticent in my young adult years, so my college friends played a prank on me, voting me social chairperson of the dormitory at a meeting where I was absent. Once voted in, I became extremely competitive, vowing to put together more successful parties than the other dorms. I polled students for their preferences and organized wine and cheese tasting events over the usual beer keg offerings. At the parties, I made sure to introduce people to each other and keep things lively. Before long, I adopted the identity of social organizer and later used those skills in leadership roles. Like Courtney, I drew on a strength (my competitive drive) to transform a weakness (reticence) into becoming a different person (social engaged).
In their book The Upside of Your Downside, Todd Kashdan and Robert Biswas-Diener introduce the concept of wholeness: the ability to tolerate distress as an important component of happiness. They advance the idea that all emotions are beneficial and can be channeled constructively, as in the case of anger helping us identify and advance our needs. Indeed, working through negative emotions can lead to more positive outcomes, as in the case of confused students who work through their confusion scoring better on tests than non-confused students. To perform at our best, the authors suggest, we need emotional wholeness: awareness and acceptance of all emotional experience. It is in the working through of the negativity that we achieve unique positives.
Ivtzan, Lomas, Hefferon, and Worth refer to “second wave” positive psychology as one that embraces adversity and negative experience in the building of resilience and growth. They note that the hero’s journey is one of overcoming obstacles, not one of unlimited joy and success. Self-transcendence through spirituality, they explain, is yet another example of overcoming limitations and negative experiences to achieve qualitative change. Most of the world’s great spiritual traditions, for example, incorporate rituals for repentance. In coming to terms with what we’ve done wrong, we connect to a deep sense of who we want to be, creating motivations that transcend ordinary, daily wants and needs.
The common theme here is that our most promising paths to growth may be through our negative traits and experiences and not around them. I would further add the possibility that our greatest negatives occur when we are most alienated from the values, talents, and meanings that underlie our strengths. If I’m not in my competitive mode of succeeding by helping others, I’m just a socially awkward person. If I’m not in my caring mode of training and helping developing traders, I’m simply another punter riding the emotional ups and downs of riding profits and losses. Perhaps you’ve experienced the unique loneliness of being in a group of people who do not and cannot connect emotionally. That can be painful; it can also become a prod to develop our most meaningful relationships.
All of us have a dark side. Cover it over and it merely becomes darker. Or we can recognize that the darkness is only possible in the absence of light. Who we are at our worst is simply the shadow of our best selves.
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