“Feeding the good wolf”- is success simply a question of positive thought?

“Feed the good wolf”- Ever come across that phrase before? You can find the story quite easily using Google where plenty of opportunity exists for you to read, watch or listen to it; certainly, in video form its very motivational & really does give you a temporary positive “lift” that’s for sure. In these days of social media (& LinkedIn is no different) we are constantly bombarded with “positivity messages” and images telling us to “keep calm &….”, so it’s clearly on a lot of peoples minds that we need a mental pick me up every now and then, but in reality is it so easy just to see an image or phrase and snap in to a positive state of mind? Is it just a simple question of directing our thoughts towards the positive rather than the negative? Can we just "think" our way out of bad situations & in to good ones?

Hold that thought and for now let’s get back to the Good Wolf and see where that takes us.

Here is how the story goes:

“Two Wolves” is a Cherokee legend and illustrates the most important battle of our lives; the one between our good and bad thoughts.

A grandfather is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside every person,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – that wolf represents anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – that wolf represents joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?” The grandfather simply replied, “Whichever one you feed.”

Of course this is a classic case of good vs evil, positive vs negative , substitute any of those words above for your own words to represent life’s ups and downs that are relevant to you- the final line though does make the point or drive at it that we do seem to have a choice in terms of the direction of our thinking; in modern speak " we own that right to choose how we wish to look at things" it seems.

Is it that easy though to just have the mental control to focus on positive thoughts & behaviour when in todays world there are so many demands on our time & expectations around our performance? Is simply thinking positively going to get us the outcomes we want, or do we need something more substantial than that? Do we need to overlay a positive mindset across a practical approach to the development of our skills & competencies that increase our chances of success? Its almost certainly a combination of the two.

Over 30 years ago Dr Carol Dweck studied the attitudes of students and their response to setbacks; Dr Dweck & her colleagues noticed that some students rebounded on receiving bad news in terms of their results while other students seemed devastated; further along the process they created the phrases “fixed mindset” & “growth mindset” to describe the underlying attitudes & beliefs people have towards learning.

Advances in neuroscience have shown us that the brain is far more mouldable than we’ve realised in the past- it’s referred to as Neuroplasticity. Research has shown how connectivity between neurons can change with experience. In other words, and simply put these neuroscientific discoveries have shown us that we can increase our neural growth by the actions we take, such as using good strategies, asking questions, practicing and following good habits.

In everyday life this means in short that if people believe they can get smarter, in turn through effort & time this will make them stronger & ultimately lead to improved performance & achievement. If we follow the flow of that process it goes from self-acceptance around what their current situation is through to a recognition that in order to improve a situation it will take new learnings, hard work and application. It’s a question of going from a fixed mindset to a growth one and the good news is we are the owners of that transition!

So, in summary our success seems to depend not just on our ability to foster a positive mindset but also to understand the fact that this mindset needs to recognise where we need to improve, focus on our areas of skill development which in turn needs application & time for us to achieve the outcomes we desire. 

So, from this point on and to get things started….. Which wolf are you going to feed?

Mark works for Lockwood and Rann, a Management Consultancy offering coaching, training and mentoring programmes to the recruitment & healthcare industries.