Overcoming Negativity

Dear HBR:

Harvard Business Review

Careers, Business/management, Work, Advice, Harvard, Help, Mentor, Workplace, Business, Management, Challenges, Entrepreneurship, Hbr, Office, Business/careers, Business/entrepreneurship

4.6 • 782 Ratings

🗓️ 4 April 2019

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Do you ruminate endlessly on difficult work situations? Dan and Alison answer your questions with the help of David DeSteno, a psychologist at Northeastern University. They talk through what to do when your boss constantly criticizes you, you’ve been fired unexpectedly, or your coworkers complain about you to your boss.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Dear HBR from Harvard Business Review.
0:03.9	I'm Dan McGinn.
0:04.9	And I'm Alison Beard.
0:12.3	Work can be frustrating, but it doesn't have to be.
0:15.3	We don't need to let the conflicts get us down.
0:17.8	That's where Dear HBR comes in.
0:19.9	We take your questions, look at the research,
0:22.5	talk to the experts, and help you move forward. Today we're talking about overcoming negativity
0:35.1	with David Desteno. He's a professor of psychology at
0:38.6	Northeastern University. His new book is Emotional Success, The Power of Gratitude, Compassion, and
0:44.8	Pride. David, thanks for coming on the show. Sure, thanks for having me. So we get a lot of letters
0:49.8	in which something negative happens to somebody at work, and they really have a hard time
0:54.9	letting go of that. Why is it? Well, when something bad happens, our normal response is to be
1:01.0	upset about it, and that's a cue to us that in some ways our goals are being blocked, or someone
1:07.9	has treated us unfairly. But the important thing about moving forward is to reframe that negativity into a strategy
1:14.2	that can actually help you succeed.
1:16.3	And I think that's where a lot of people get stuck not knowing exactly how to do that.
1:20.4	Does that not come naturally?
1:21.9	Is it not an intuitive process?
1:23.4	Why don't people sort of learn that over time?
1:25.5	I think because we tend to ruminate and rehash things that have happened to us,
1:30.1	to try and understand why it may have happened.
	...

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