You’ve got to ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive
Eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Don’t mess with Mister In Between
~ Johnny Mercer
I was teaching a class on neuroscience and coaching, and we were exploring how emotions are constructed, also known as the process of prediction in the brain. (Check out the link for more on this — it’s fascinating.) I asked the group to consider what happens when someone always predicts either the worst or the best. One of the students was a retired police office who happened to have run human trafficking investigations. When I asked about always predicting the best, he leaned back in his chair and said in his Texas drawl, “Well, in my line of work, we called them victims.”
My first reaction was “yikes!” but then I thought more about it. Assuming that everyone has your best interests at heart is, sorry to say, a recipe for being taken advantage of. As Wanda Pierce says in Bojack Horseman, “When you look at someone through rose-colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags.”
But neither am I a fan of the other end of the spectrum, having had people in my life who tended to consistently predict the worst. Walking through life with endless suspicion and negativity is no better. Being a cynic tends to bring you and those around you down. It leads to depression and chases people away.
So what do we do? On the one hand, it’s common in the human development field and new age spirituality to exhort people to see everyone as “doing their best.” We are advised to go into difficult conversations “assuming positive intent.” We are told, in the words of the Johnny Mercer song, to “ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive, eliminate the negative.” To me, this is overly simplistic. Sometimes it is helpful, sometimes it is not. It depends on who you are dealing with.
But on the other hand, we all know people who are professional nay-sayers, “negative Nellies or Nelsons” and, in the online world, trolls. They view their role in life as pointing out others’ mistakes and stupidity, which they see everywhere. It’s not helpful to become this type of person either.
In my view, the answer is (sorry Johnny Mercer) actually to “mess with Mister In Between.” This is more complex, requiring an eyes-wide-open orientation to the world. It’s far easier to come down on one side of the polarity or the other, because then your work is done and you don’t have to think about how to respond in each and every situation. If you are a see-the-positive person, you interpret everything as good. If you are a negative Nellie or Nelson, the opposite. Your brain will automatically sort and filter for the evidence to support this without any real effort on your part.
But to deal with the world as it comes is mentally more challenging. You have to check in with your intuition — what is your sense of this person or situation? How do you feel in their presence? You have to look to your experience without bias. Has this person been reliable in the past? Has this sort of situation turned out well or badly for you? Is what they are telling you verifiable? You have to slow things down so that you can assess and decide with a clear view and understanding.
I myself am a big fan of Mister In Between, because they understand that seeing the positive or acknowledging the negative are both critical to a healthy, self-empowered life.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ann Betz is the co-founder of BEabove Leadership and an expert on the intersection of neuroscience, coaching, trauma and human transformation. She speaks, trains and coaches internationally, and writes about neuroscience and coaching as well as relational trauma. Ann is also a published poet who loves cats, rain in the desert, and healthy relationships. She is learning to hold the positive and negative as useful perspectives in a self-empowered life.
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