ROAD RAGE AND BOARD RAGE BOTH LEAD TO ACCIDENTS

We all lose it. You know that suppressed boiling up inside which can be best dealt with by getting very, very angry and metaphorically (or literally) cutting someone up. Research shows this kills people if you’re driving and kills creativity and clear thinking if you’re in a meeting.

But when you feel great, alert, are happy and at your best you’ll perform better. Good mood equals good performance. Yes, it’s really that simple.

Yet the naysayers and preachers of doom would have it that good creative thinking is best achieved in a world of suffering. This is La Boheme speak - frozen tiny hands and all that.

The thesis is that after he cut off his ear Van Gogh really got going, that Jane Austen suffered in spinster frustration and that Beethoven got better the deafer he got. Human beings survive misfortune in an admirably robust way to be sure but masochism is not the elixir of clear thinking.

My life has been full of seeing futile rage - a crazed executive so angry he was unable to drive out of the car park and reversed at high speed into a wall and then forward into another one. A creative director in an advertising agency hurling a chair - this showed he cared passionately I suppose. Or the executive from a major department store whose motto “when the going gets tough the tough get going” suddenly seemed meaningless as, failing to get the answer he wanted in a phone call, he ripped the phone from the wall and hurled it from a fifth floor window.

This is the stuff of Monty Python.

If you want to have a good day be in a good mood in a place in which you feel comfortable and where a team is committed to trying to solve the problems and exploit the opportunities not blame others or God or bad luck on things not being quite as they’d like.

It’s so much easier being in a good mood.

How to solve problems and make brilliant decisions. (Business Thinking Skills that really work) published by Pearson is coming out on November 12th 2014

IS YOUR GOOD MOOD SWITCH ON?

I’m an unashamed optimist. Not that being cheerful come what may always makes sense – the First World War was full of optimistic generals. But clicking on the “let’s go for it” switch – click - usually results in a better result than wrenching at the “aagghh! How typical, I feel awful - I expect today’ll be another shocker too” switch.
Is it too much to expect there’ll be more good nature than bad? Is it a surprise that crime, teenage pregnancy, house fires, drug abuse and alcohol consumption have all massively declined in this country over the past decade. Don’t believe me? Go check.

 

Is it a surprise that we have a bigger manufacturing industry than France, that we make more vehicles in the UK than we did in 1980 and 50% more than we did 4 years ago?

In a developed world increasingly dependent on service industries is Germany with its relatively old fashioned industries and high labour costs concerned about its lagging service sector – only 2/3 of its GDP compared to the UK’s 80%?

Are we all doomed in the UK?
If you listen to the hail-fellow-well-met Mr Farage you’d think so.

I saw a bit of Question Time on Thursday. He was on the panel. It was in Boston, the one town in the UK where immigration is a particularly tricky issue. Well in the part I saw our Nigel was murdered by a reasonable “immigration may be difficult but it’s an integration issue and as much our fault as theirs” audience. They were brilliant, open minded and kind.
But especially encouraging was Benjamin Zephaniah, the Birmingham born Rastafarian poet who is best known through his brilliant poem “Talking Turkeys” which starts, but you’ll remember it…

“Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas
Cos' turkeys just wanna hav fun
Turkeys are cool, turkeys are wicked
An every turkey has a Mum.”

The panel was talking about the closure of the Portsmouth shipyards. Grave faces all round.  Farage “it’s a crying shame”. There was talk about our strategic vulnerability as an island and the prospective invasion of the Falklands. And Benjamin quietly said:- “I just wonder what would happen if peace broke out worldwide. I mean would we need these warships? Mind you I worry about all those jobs. Can’t we make nice cruise ships there instead?”

Click. On goes that switch.

And finally a great quote from the American writer, William Saroyan:

“Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep, really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.”

Click. Click. Click