One of the segments we added to The Platform Builders Mastermind Group this year was a “Leadership Spotlight.”  During one segment of our call each week, we feature an author or leader and focus on their current projects or activities.

This week we had a great call and were honored to have Dr. Kathryn Cramer join us who recently released her seventh book, LEAD Positive: What Highly Effective Leaders See, Say and Do.

The latest in Dr. Cramer’s Asset Based Thinking (ABT) series, LEAD Positive pack a tremendous amount of great content on how to be courageous, resilient, and optimistic as we as leaders, can produce significant and lasting change in both our personal and professional lives.

This book is full of concepts and ideas that will no doubt change the way we think, and result in raising our leadership lid.  Dr. Cramer suggests that we, by nature, are wired to “avoid harm” and therefore react faster to the negative than we do to the positive. Over time, this creates a negative bias in our thinking.  But we have the power to change that!

One of Dr. Cramer’s ABT exercises really caught my attention.  The Scan-Snap-Savor exercise, although simple in concept, has the potential to completely change the way we think.  See what you think …

SCAN

Dr. Cramer suggests that we look for a positive fact that is either happening right now or in our immediate past.  Then focus your attention on one of three areas, self, others, or situation.  In Dr. Cramer’s word’s, “The self scan requires you to look for your own leadership strengths, capabilities, efforts, and skills that are showing up in the present moment to move things forward.”

To me, this sounds like “short-term version of the Law of Reflection.  Dr. Cramer points out that, “The situation scan leads you to zero in on the emerging dynamics working in your favor.”  How cool is that!  All we have to do is think positive and the energy pulled from that thinking will produce positive results.  The power of positive thinking ring a bell for anyone?

SNAP

I recently heard Dr. Cramer describe this part of the equation as taking a mental picture of that positive fact that you focused on the the scan step.  When we develop that positive image in our mind just like downloading pictures onto you computer.  They are stored there for your future use.

Again, a pretty straight forward concept – visually snap the picture and download it to your cranial hard-drive.  (Tweet This)  I see it like this, if you don’t take the picture, you are going to have to recreate the image to access that “positive” memory.  In today’s warp speed society, we simply choose not to take the time or energy to do it and default to the negativity bias we already have.

SAVOR

This is the difference maker.  Before you store away that mental snapshot, spend 30-60 seconds “savoring” it.  Remember a hundred years ago when film had to be developed in a liquid solution?  It had to soak in that stuff until it fully developed.  Dr. Cramer has brought that concept back to life and you don’t even need a dark room.

Follow her advice and, “Let the full measure of the experience sink deeply into your implicit memory.  Savor it.  In less than 90 seconds, you have allowed yourself to step outside the hustle and bustle of the day.“

Dr. Wayne Dyer said, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”  Maybe it’s time you trade in that old camera that doesn’t seem to be working for you and pick up a new one that takes the type of pictures that will get you the “POSITIVE” results you have been looking for.

TODAY’S CHALLENGE:  Pick up a copy of LEAD Positive and start using your manual focus option.  You just might like the increased quality of the pictures you’ve been taking!

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Barry Smith  3/26/14   photo courtesy of the Weaving Influence   © Building What Matters 2014