Why Overcoming Negativity Bias Could be Critical for Your Business

Bill Belanger: Obviously you want to make everybody happy, but that’s probably never going to happen. But what ends up happening is because the emotional reaction to negative emotions is so much stronger than the positive emotions. That company could be saying, okay, well, what are we doing right with these nine clients? Why are they so happy? Let’s talk to them. And let’s get nine other clients just like them. But people tend to get so distracted by the negativity, that you’re fixating so much on that there’s this missed opportunity.

Bethany Fishbein: Hi, I am Bethany Fishbein, CEO of the power practice and host of the Power Hour optometry podcast. Before we get into the content of the podcast, wanted to let you know about an event that we are going to be at sponsored by Euclid at their headquarters in Reston, Virginia on July 31st, and August 1st, it’s really a great event for people who are doing some Ortho-K lenses looking to elevate their game both clinically and on a practice management side. So, it’s an evening and a day, come down to the Reston headquarters, you’re going to learn clinical financial practice management strategies, different ways to address myopia management through case studies we’ll be at the discussion the Euclid’s clinical and scientific affairs team will be there, you get to go on a tour of Euclid see their lens manufacturing facility, and everything that makes them unique to register, go to our website, power practice.com. The registration fees include a night of hotel dinner the night before breakfast, lunch, the tour, and the educational sessions. I’m really looking forward to it. It’s going to be exciting, and I hope to see you there. So, I’m really kind of excited for conversation today about something that I think plagues a lot of us as business owners, or something about us as business owners that really helps us depending on how you look at it. And the idea is that as practice owners, a lot of us are really constantly very focused on what could go wrong. And it’s a curse and a blessing. So to sort it all out. I’ve got a great guest. This is Bill Belanger. He’s the founder of Integrated mind training, which is a firm that provides psychological coaching for entrepreneurs. Bill is a trained psychotherapist, and he applies those skills along with lots of learnings on Buddhist meditation and Buddhist ways and strong backgrounds in psychology to coaching entrepreneurs. And I feel like he’s just the person to help me figure this out. So, Bill, thank you so much for taking the time to do this.

Bill Belanger: Yeah, thank you for having me.

Bethany Fishbein: My pleasure. So, what had actually sparked this conversation is, I have talked with practice owners all day. And no matter how well things are going, I feel like they’re always zeroed in on that one thing that isn’t going well, or could be better. And when we first made contact about this, you said oh yeah, that’s negativity bias. So, talk a little bit just about what that is and what the term means and give some general information. And we’ll go from there.

Bill Belanger: Yeah, so negativity bias is considered a cognitive distortion. Basically, what that means is, it’s a way that we’re thinking about things incorrectly. And so, there’s a lot of interesting research about it. But the gist of it is that we tend to place more attention and emphasis on negative emotions and experiences than we do for positive bonds. So there’s a lot of research on this. But essentially, I think that the origin of this is from an evolutionary perspective, that it was to our benefit to place more attention on things that were dangerous things that were terrifying things that made us feel unsafe, then unpleasant things. So this is something that we continue to do to this day. So essentially, somebody could have 10, very positive things happen to them over the course of the day, and have one negative thing happen. And they will tend to fixate on that one negative thing and give it more attention. So it’s just a cognitive distortion, because it’s distorting reality, and we make those decisions. And we’re just not seeing things clearly because of that dynamic. Essentially.

Bethany Fishbein: I totally buy that. And I’m aware of it. And I know that I do it as well as many other practice owners. And I think the downside of it is it leads to us almost having like a tough personality to deal with because people around us see that focus on the negative, you can’t ever just be happy. Nothing I do is good enough. Like I hear it when we’re talking to leaders, and it filters into their life in other places as parents. The other side of it though, is I feel like for me as a business owner, it’s like really helpful and it’s good. So you’d call it a cognitive distortion. Is it something that you should be trying to fix? Or is it just kind of knowing about it? That is helpful? Yeah, good question.

Bill Belanger: I think there’s different schools of thought on that. I think for all of these things, awareness is the first part. And just to clarify, negative emotions are not problems to be fixed. So it’s more when it becomes a bias that is filtering all of our experience when it becomes a problem. One thing I want to bring up was the research of Dr. Barbara Fredrickson, who was a researcher in the field of positive psychology. Her research was basically that negative emotions, again, they serve this evolutionary advantage. So if you see a predator coming, it makes sense to really fixate on that more than anything. Or if you put your hand on a stove, you want to focus on that more than anything else. But her research was, well, then why do we have positive emotions? Well, if, if the negative emotions are here to protect us, well, our positive emotions help. And she came up with this theory called the broaden and build theory. So negative emotions tend to restrict awareness. So you become very fixated on the problem in front of you. And it also restricts the behavioral options. So if there’s a danger, the only thing you’re focused on is that danger and is getting away from it. Positive emotions tend to expand awareness, and they build the amount of possibilities and connections that you have. So from that early hunter gatherer perspective, if you have a positive state, like Curiosity, you might explore and find a new food source, or you might connect with somebody, or joy can kind of again, strengthen relationships. So there’s all these benefits to that, but they both serve a purpose. So the goal is never to get rid of negative emotions. Those are important. It’s more that if wearing fortuitous negativity, we’re always seeing the bad and things, we’re always fixating on what can go wrong, then it starts to become a problem, it becomes a problem, both for mental health because it can lead to anxiety and depression and strained relationships. But even from a business perspective, if you don’t care about emotional health whatsoever, it just makes for poor decision making. So in terms of addressing it, there’s a few different ways but I think it always starts with awareness. And noticing your habits, noticing when you’re doing that. So I can pause there. But there’s a few different ways to work with it. But it all starts from just noticing it within yourself.

Bethany Fishbein: So just go back for a second, because you talked about the impact on decision making, just talk about the effect that has on decision making. I’m just I’m interested in hearing more about that.

Bill Belanger: So, there’s some research where they would take people and induce either a neutral state, a positive state or a negative state. And this is done by making people watch, I think it was like five minutes of video. So it could be something really boring, like just grass growing essentially, or was negative emotion. So images of violence or from a war. And then positive emotions was I think, stand up comedy. So people watching this five minutes of stand up, the negative emotions have all types of effects on the ways that people make decisions on their problem solving ability on doing brain teasers on even doing mathematics and all types of things. So for a lot of infant memory as well. So for a lot of these, if you’re in a negative state, a lot of the time, it actually can decrease performance. So positive emotions do the opposite. So you can actually see connections better your cognitively, your cognition is improved from positive emotions. So again, this isn’t only just trying to make people feel happy and talking them up, it really does have a concrete example, or concrete impact on performance.

Bethany Fishbein: So you work with business owners take it more specific, like a business owner that’s focused on problems constantly focused on problems. To me, it feels like they’re gonna put the energy into solving those problems. But then they’re gonna find more problems. Like, I understand the studies are not as good at solving word puzzles, or whatever, but talk about it in a business setting, like how it changes things.

Bill Belanger: So let’s use two different ways of thinking of it. One is just in terms of life satisfaction. So I was working with a client who started a new company, it’s thriving, she has all these happy customers. But she has one big client that there is a hiccup there is some technical issue that with her program, but it becomes all consuming where the clients thinks that she’s a failure, things aren’t really working out, this whole company is going to fail. And it just becomes so distorted, because we’re so trained to look at that negativity, that I think sometimes people have a bad time, accurately assessing where they are and how successful they are. So people can make them miserable. Because as a business owner, you know, there’s never an end to problems, there will always be new, a new problem to solve. There’s always something that has to go on. So you have to kind of find a way for your own sanity to deal with that part of the business and actually remain happy. In terms of a practical application. I can give you an example from my other company. Heal bright when we had we launched many years ago. And what I find myself happening is if we had 10 clients that were happy, and I had one client that was having a problem, I would be spending most of my time fixating on this one problem. But oftentimes it was a small client that wasn’t very consequential, but because of the emotional intensity that we have this client that’s unhappy, it impaired my judgment. So I’m spending all this time on something that actually really wasn’t important to my business. And it was more just a problematic client that was probably going to be bringing negativity no matter what we were doing. So then it becomes you’re putting resources into the wrong thing, because your brain is telling you this negative thing needs attention. And you know, a final example, too, it’s this difference between reactive work and proactive work. So negativity is usually driving us to do this reactive work, where from again, coming back to Dr. Frederick, his research, negative emotions don’t help with creativity and building new things, you need a positive emotional state to do that. So if it’s something where you want to come up with a new product, or a new sales channel, or new marketing, so these are things that really drive business growth, positive emotions are much better. So that’s the other thing I’ve seen with some business owners, if they’re always in this negative reaction, problem solving mode, and their business tends not to grow, they tend to miss opportunities, and they can kind of get left behind. If they go down that downward spiral.

Bethany Fishbein: That helps, I can really see that and I can feel it from the examples that you’re giving, right? Where, like you said, somebody has the vast majority of happy clients and somebody’s having a problem, somebody’s unhappy, we see it in optometric offices, you’ve got that one patient that caused an issue. And all of a sudden, your whole team is focused on how to deal with this at the expense of being able to do anything else. So I absolutely see that. And it’s funny in those situations, I’m quick to say, let it go, give them a refund, whatever they want, get him out the door, don’t think about it onto the next thing. But as a business leader, and as a business owner, I absolutely sometimes fall into that negativity trap myself. So okay, that’s a better explanation of the idea of distortion, right? Nine happy people one is unhappy, but it makes you feel like the world is ending. Everybody’s unhappy. Everybody hates you. Nobody likes you. The business is gonna fail. Yeah. Okay, I feel that.

Bill Belanger: And using that example, to keep it simple. There, you have 10 clients, nine are very happy, and one is unhappy. First of all, if you have a business where 90% of your clients are very happy, that’s amazing. Like that’s a successful business, right? So if you can replicate that, that’s wonderful. Obviously, you want to make everybody happy. But that’s probably never going to happen. But what ends up happening is because the emotional reaction to negative emotions is so much stronger than to positive emotions. That company could be saying, Okay, well, what are we doing right? With these nine clients? Why are they so happy? Let’s talk to them. And let’s get nine other clients just like them. But people tend to get so distracted by the negativity, that you’re fixating so much on that there’s this missed opportunity. And again, this is not to say that you shouldn’t problem solve, and you shouldn’t talk with that unhappy client and figure out what’s going wrong and improve your product, or prove your approach. But it becomes a distortion when you’re not seeing things correctly, then you’re essentially missing an opportunity.

Bethany Fishbein: What are you looking for, to know if you’re in that? So awareness is the first step? How do you gain that awareness? Because it’s easy to see talking about someone else, but when you’re in it, and that patient left a one star Google review? And you’re in the moment? It’s hard to get out of it? Like what are you looking for to make you aware this is what’s going on?

Bill Belanger: Yeah, there’s a few things I think some of this comes from cognitive behavioral therapy, which is challenging thoughts. So using that example of a one star review on Google. So, I have a friend who is about to start a business. And I was talking with another friend about it. And he said, oh, I can’t believe he’s about to take so much risk, he could get one bad review, and it would take his reputation, and he will have, he can’t go back to his job. So that’s a thought that CBT would say is a catastrophic thinking type of thought, because if you don’t really question it, it seems oh, this would be so bad, I got a one-star review. But if you really analyze it, it’s probably not true. In cognitive behavioral therapy, it’s you’re looking at thoughts objectively, and you can even write them down. If you’re in therapy, you can talk to a therapist about it, but you’re trying to really just look at it, and just put the emotions aside temporarily and analyze it. So some of the language and cognitive behavioral therapies, we can have black and white thinking, catastrophic thinking. And these are just thoughts again, they’re just not correct. Because if you get one bad review, of course, that’s that you don’t want that and you want to try to mitigate that as much as possible. But it’s probably not going to tank your business, you’ll probably be okay, and freaking out about it’s probably not going to help. So I think part of it is that being curious about your emotional state is the first step. And then with thoughts, analyze them and make them external by talking about them or writing them and then just say, is this rational and examine it critically? And a lot of times the thoughts that we are very quick to jump to that come from negative emotions aren’t rational, and they don’t really hold up under scrutiny.

Bethany Fishbein: I don’t know if it’s totally the same thing. But we talk about numbers in a business and keeping track of things. And I find for myself personally, keeping track of some of the metrics of a business helped me get that rational thought, when I need it, like, all of a sudden, it’s a slow day, the schedule is empty, and we’re freaking out, our business is going to close. We’ve been in business 20 plus years, it’s not going to close after a bad week. But at that moment, it feels that way. And looking at the numbers and the cycles to see, it’s not that bad. It’s just scheduled funny. We had a period like this before. It provides a contrasting viewpoint to the craziness that’s going on in my head at that moment.

Bill Belanger: Yeah. And that’s a perfect example of something that is objective. So numbers don’t have feelings. It’s very straightforward. So if there isn’t, if your numbers are going down every year, then that’s a problem. And if you’re acknowledging that, and you’re trying to figure that out, that’s not negativity bias, you’re in touch with reality. But if your numbers are going up every year and you’re freaking out, then you can start to say, Okay, there’s something off here. So there’s a mismatch, this is distorted, it’s not actually accurate. And you know, another thing I’ll bring up too, is, in terms of how do you know if you’re having negativity bias and this awareness and curiosity, part of it, you can do that in the moment? So okay, I’m having a freakout because of the one star Google review. But you also want to do on a more macro level of kind of question. How’s your week been? How’s your month, been? Are you in negativity all the time? Or is it generally feeling good? Dr. Frederickson, her research found that for optimal mental health, you should have a positive to negative state and ratio of three to one, three to one of positive outcomes, some negative outcomes. There’s been some arguments about how she came at that number. But I think let’s just say roughly something in that ballpark. Makes sense. So that means it’s an eight hour work day, two hours of the day, you could be in a negative state of stress and anxiety and fear, or whatever. But most of the day, hopefully, you’re feeling pretty good. You’re connecting with people, you’re maybe getting into a flow state, or you’re feeling positive. That’s what she said, that’s where peak performers are at a lot of times. So that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be that if you’re not doing that there’s something wrong with you just want to be clear sign oh, most plenty days, I’m not close to that.

Bethany Fishbein: Because that’s totally what my negativity bias is saying that I suck.

Bill Belanger: Yeah, now I have to figure it out. But it’s less of the prescriptive type of judgment, oh, I’m not having enough. And it’s bad. It’s more just the research shows, when people have more positive emotions, they flourish, they do better, they’re more effective, they’re healthier. But again, it’s interesting that there’s still negative emotions there the people that are doing the best, they still have negative emotions every single day, the other end of the spectrum, or people have, what I love that they’re using this phrase more is toxic positivity, where you can ever feel negative emotions, and always has to be positive. And anything that’s uncomfortable is unacceptable. That goes way too far. It’s more about being balanced. So I’ve seen that too, with other business owners where the negativity bias gets out of control. And not just that, but other there’s other dynamics at play, too. And then you start to get into the burnout stage, where you’re in negative emotions for three years, because you’ve been trying to get a company off the ground, then it can get really extreme and people start having health issues and all types of stuff. 

Bethany Fishbein: Bill, talk about the effect that this has extra kind of on leaders, because when you’re leading a team, like it’s one thing to go through this roller coaster in your own head, right? It’s fully another to take people on this roller coaster with you. And some leaders do it. And then I meet some who feel like they can’t do it at all. And so the healthy negative emotion, they’re, they’re holding in, they’re trying to pretend everything is okay. And then they end up feeling very isolated. Their team never understands them. Nobody gets it except them. Like how do leaders have to manage this not only for themselves, but the people that are working with them?

Bill Belanger: Yeah, interesting question. And I want to be careful to I think that there’s many styles of leadership, I’m certainly not trying to say this is the only way to be a leader. There’s probably an infinite amount of ways people can deal with this. There’s some of the things that I believe in, I think are helpful. Again, with that negativity, it’s finding healthy expressions for that. So I’m a big believer that if you’re a business owner, you should probably be in therapy or work with a coach or just have some type of self care practice, could be meditation, it could be journaling, but a healthy expression for those negative emotions. The way that I would say what is a healthy expression of negative emotions is usually expressing them verbally or people can do it in art therapy or in music or something like that. The talking about negative emotions tends to help with the regulation of them. So for a leader should find an outlet for that. And the other thing And then becomes a little bit of a paradox is that if you are suppressing negative emotions, because you want to be positive, it tends to make them worse. But if you’ve skillfully expressing them, even with subordinates or other people, if you’re doing it a really mindful way, it can actually be a positive thing. So if you’re just naming in a safe relationship, I’m really anxious about this account. And here’s why. But it’s very grounded, Then, it’s kind of ceases to be negative a little bit. But I think it’s just I think, again, the first part is that leaders need to be mindful of their emotional states, because emotions are contagious. So I don’t know if you’re familiar with the research on mirror neurons. But basically, we have these parts in our brain called mirror neurons, that we mirror what other people are feeling. So the research on house, they found this was really funny where I believe they were doing brain studies on monkeys, and seeing what parts of the brain were lighting up with different things. And a researcher walked into the lab was eating his lunch during the break, and the monkeys that were watching them, the part of their brain that usually lights up when the monkeys are eating started lighting up. So first, they thought it was a mistake, they didn’t figure out what was happening. But eventually, they came to the certain mirror neurons, that we tend to feel what other people are feeling around us. And I think we’ve all had that experience. Maybe you walk into a bar, or you’re in a bad part of town, for some reason, when you’re traveling and something feels really off, you’re picking up on what other people are feeling. But again, that happens with leaders as well, where if a leader is really negative, or just really stressed, or whatever, it tends to kind of ripple out into the other people. So again, that doesn’t mean they should never have negativity, but generally being a supportive, warm, curious, open-minded person, you’re going to help other people feel like that as well. And if you are modeling to your employees, that the emotions are okay, or talking about difficult emotions is okay, then you’re going to model that as well. So yeah, I agree with you. I mean, I think for leaders and business owners, it’s there’s a lot more pressure and stress. So they have to be even more aware of this dynamic.

Bethany Fishbein: Yeah, there’s a lot more pressure and stress, and then the stakes of not handling it well are even higher, because of the number of people affected. And the stakes of decreased performance, if that’s what being in this negative state is causing the stakes for that are higher, too. So it’s a tough seat to be in. Are there strategies or techniques? Or what can you share that will help those of us, self included, who are sitting here like, Okay, how do I deal with this? How can we make it better?

Bill Belanger: Yeah, there’s a few things. So again, I think, start with awareness and curiosity. So if you’re in a negative state, just being curious about it, and if mindfulness practice can really help with that, or any meditation practice. So that’s where the pure awareness perspective is just observing without judgment, the cognitive part of it is noticing your thinking patterns. So if your client is upset, and you start paying, and you start thinking, this is a session disaster, and all these horrible things are going to happen, and the company is going to fall apart, it’s just taking a little bit more time to bring awareness to your thinking patterns and see if it’s rational. And then from a behavioral perspective, I think, which is really important is which I think a lot of leaders don’t do a good enough job is really organizing your week, in a way that you’re going to balance your emotions. So whatever that is, for each person is different. But if you know that, hey, when I do yoga, I just feel really good, or I need to go listen to music for work every day. Whatever those things are, it’s about having a consistent source of positive emotions in your week, to when you have these positive emotional states that can help you to recover from the bad effects of negative emotions, you can kind of cut that negativity bias at its root. So a silly example. But when I was in my clinical internship, and I was working with clients that were addicted, I’d be working with some clients that had some pretty heavy stuff. And I had recently been studying some of the positive psychology. So I downloaded a bunch of stand up comedy on my Spotify account. And it’s just silly that sometimes just listening to five minutes of something that would make me laugh, or just shift your perspective has kind of got me out of that. So I think leaders are different, and everybody has a different style. But one thing is just if you’re noticing that the weeks or months or years are going by or lose all this negativity, I really think you have to look into your routine and find some things that are going to make you feel good every week. So you can kind of break that cycle. And that includes vacations, too. I mean, I think that’s another interesting topic. But being able to get out of that context entirely of problem solving, and you’re doing something totally different. I think it’d be really helpful.

Bethany Fishbein: What I like about what you’re saying is that sometimes they think about those kinds of things, vacation, yoga, standup comedy, like doing those kinds of things as anti productivity, like anti performance. And so I like the knowledge that those things are actually because they’re putting you in a better mindset, enhancing the performance, even though it feels like you’re spending that hour, that day, or that week, disconnected from the business by doing it, you’re able to make the business better that, I like.

Bill Belanger: That’s where I think a lot of the self help and workplace talk, they don’t communicate that part as well. So it’s more of like, be kind to yourself. And it’s take a bubble bath and do mindfulness, which is great. But I think for certain leaders, like that’s all well and good, but I don’t have time for that. And I’m running a company and I have responsibility. But even if so let’s say that’s true that you don’t care about all that. It’s just the research shows that when you’re in more positive emotional state, you’re cognitively enhanced, and you’re going to make better decisions. The other thing too, that I think is having the cognitive and emotional flexibility is really important. So I can share before this call, I was reviewing a contract, I wasn’t stressed or too negative about it. But I’m in this really narrow problem solving mode. So it’s an 11 page contract. So I have to print it through, I have to read through every word. And I’m trying to find things that aren’t right trying to identify errors, because what you have to be really discerning and kind of this narrow attention. So that’s a good state to have reviewing the contract. But I had to discipline myself before we were jumping on the podcast, which is hard, because I’m just in a roll with doing the contract stuff, I have to shift states, this is not a good state to be talking with somebody about this. So for me, I just meditated for about five minutes, that’s really all that I really needed. So again, it’s we’re negative states are helpful. Being narrow, having narrow attention is helpful, it’s just wishes most helpful in which context I think is the important part,

Bethany Fishbein: Maybe you can expand a little bit into how to address this or help someone on your team learn this. Because as you’re talking, I’m thinking about some of the things that happen pretty regularly. Like we have a situation recently where a staff member has a lot of stress going on in her personal life outside the office, nothing to do with work, she’s really good at turning it off taking care of the patients when she gets there. But what it’s done, it’s made every reaction and every emotion, negative emotion that happens in the office kind of feel disproportionate, like somebody has a really tough day outside of work, they come in, and they’re nice, and they’re friendly. But somebody says something a certain way. And they say she’s yelling at me, he’s livid. And they’re not they’re questioning something, or maybe a patient is unhappy on a normal day, it would be Yeah, she’s really pissed about this, what can we do to fix it, but it feels much more extreme because of their existing mindset. Some of us are in business partnerships, and you’re not always feeling the distortion at the same way at the same time. So sometimes they can see it in you, but sometimes you can see it in them. Can you signal someone like how do you help somebody else recognize and start to get out of it?

Bill Belanger: Yeah, that’s an interesting question. I think it’s admittedly a little trickier helping somebody else. So it’s kind of reminded like the alcoholic anonymous idea, it’s like somebody, they have to decide to stop drinking, you can’t force somebody to feel a certain way, or to change their behavior, it is up to that person. That being said, I think listening and bringing awareness to what somebody’s going through can really help and allowing them to express a negative emotion is maybe your first step. So if somebody feels really stressed and burned out, and you know them well, and something seems off, it’s so simple, but just pulling them aside, just talking to them. And I think what a leaders have to remember is, when you’re having something relational, you have to again, drop that problem solving mindset. And it’s more about just being with the person, it’s listening and allowing them to talk about the negative emotions without trying to solve the problem so much. It’s just when people talk about negative emotions, the reactivity goes down. So there’s some research on that with negative emotions, the amygdala is really lit up. So that’s the part of the brain that signals fight or flight, more of an older part of the brain. When people journal about negative emotions, the amygdala activation goes down. So just being able to talk about that’s why if people often feel better talking to somebody, when something difficult is going on, you’re expressing it, and you’re allowing that to kind of to let go of it and for the brain to kind of get back to the baseline. So I think part of it is giving people a place to talk. And then it’s also a judgment call. So if you know, hey, I’ve been working with this person for five years, they’re really on but they’re going through a divorce or their kid is sick or whatever is happening. Then as a leader, you might just know there might be things they don’t have the capacity to do right now and you might have to pull back or you can take their feedback with that extra little grain of salt where Okay, they’re catastrophizing, like you said, they got negative feedback and then blowing it out of proportion. So I think it’s tempering your expectations. And I also think just generally speaking, it’s which is a bigger conversation, but trying to have a healthy culture at the company, being a good leader where they feel like they can talk to the person that helps a lot. Generally speaking.

Bethany Fishbein: I just want to spend one more minute on that line of listening versus problem solving because I know, for me, that’s a personal. I’m not gonna call it a weakness, but it’s, I work with my husband. And we had to figure out as we opened the business together, like, when is someone just venting? And when do they want you to do something about it in the office, we actually started to ask that question. Are you just venting? Or is this something you’re looking for help to solve? And people stop for a minute? And sometimes they answer, I’m just venting. And then you know, you’re just supposed to listen. But that same personality that problem solver just kicks in, and you start thinking, what do I have to do about this so that they never experience this terrible thing again? And that’s not what they’re looking for always. It’s an interesting thing.

Bill Belanger: Yeah, it’s. I mean, to make a generalization, a lot of the clients that I work with and business owners, they vastly underestimate how helpful listening can be and they overestimate that problem solving mindset in terms of relationships their go-to is this person is coming to me and they’re complaining about something and they have a problem. I have to solve that to figure it out. But a lot of the time, that’s not what the person’s coming to you for. They just want to be heard. So it’s interesting that you say that. I actually think the way that you talked about in the workforce is great. I think that’s a really good example. I have a therapist friend. I think the way that she puts it, when her daughter is upset, she’ll say, Do you want me just to be with you or do you want me to try to fix this? So it’s. It’s just. You want me just to hear you? Do you just want to vent is the first option or are we trying to get into problem solving mode here? I think for a lot of the time, it’s actually just listening and just to say that in terms of listening, listening. I think people make it more complicated, but it’s. You’re just being really open minded. You’re being curious. You’re reflecting back what you’re hearing. You’re using the same language. The person talking to you is saying sort of, they’re saying, I’m so upset that this account didn’t go well. You say, Oh, you’re really upset, or, yeah, it didn’t go well. If you should stay with that. Yeah. So again, I love the intervention that you mentioned, but I think just asking somebody what’s helpful is a good starting point.

Bethany Fishbein: And in those situations, we do it sometimes in consulting, there’s times where somebody is talking to us about a situation and a practice and we’re listening, asking questions, just learning about it. And sometimes before we even get to the role of problem solver, they go, Oh, yeah, okay, good. Thank you so much. I feel so much better. And, um, I think I didn’t even tell you anything yet. And so yeah, having that ability to vocalize it, having that person to be in it with you for a few minutes makes a difference.

Bill Belanger: Definitely.

Bethany Fishbein: Cool! Bill, is there anything else that you want to say on this topic? And you feel like you’re hoping. We talked about we didn’t get to? 

Bill Belanger: Just. I mean, I think we talked about a little bit. But just the one thing that is still coming up is again, this idea of learning to structure positive emotions into your week and how important that is, the difference between reactive work and proactive work and the role that emotions play in that. So that’s just something I would encourage everybody to really be curious about where, especially in the times in your business where you’re struggling and your stress and everything is difficult, you can even if some people I know even put blocks in their calendar. So it’s this is a three hour block every week or thirty minute block every week where you’re just trying to be in this positive emotional state and being brainstorming or be curious. I think what happens is is for some people in the early stages of the business when they’re starting it’s fun, it’s creative, you’re making something new, it’s exciting, and there’s all this treat of energy that kind of gets things going. And then inevitably, there’s more and more problems that come up at a certain stage and people lose touch with that. But I really think for people, it is really important to try for business owners, if you can structure things a little bit differently, if you can outsource some of your work, that your business is going to do the best when you’re at your best and the more that you can spend time in these positive states and these curious and creative states. That’s where business growth comes from, I think, and that’s just I think I would believe it on that. I think that’s something that can help people a lot.

Bethany Fishbein: Yeah, that’s a good message, a good reminder and for me anyway, a thought shift into what the role is of time spent doing things that make you happy and interesting.

Bill Belanger: Yeah.

Bethany Fishbein: Bill, if somebody wants to get in touch with you, where can they find you?

Bill Belanger: So, my website is www.integratedmindtraining.com and you can also just shoot me an email bill@integratedmindtraining.com.

Bethany Fishbein: Awesome. And our role in the optometric world for a lot of people is to be that sounding board, that partner who listens and helps to reach whatever goals the practice owner has. So, for more information on what we do, you can reach us at www.powerpractice.com.