Infect People with your Positivity

What’s your P-number?

If you have seen me speak or read any of my updates, you will already know I am a big believer in finding the silver lining in every dark cloud. One of the largest, darkest, and most miserable clouds hanging over everyone is the pandemic and everything it has brought with it. Every day we are reminded of the struggle as soon as we turn on the news. Even if you avoid the news, the big “P” follows you to the shop when you don your mask, the park when you give others a wide berth, and even in the comfort of your living room when you log on to social media.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to focus on the R-number or anything else to do with this pandemic. Let’s talk about something else—the P-number! That’s “P” for positivity. Did you know that laughter is contagious? You do now, and the science is there to prove it. 

In a study called Social Laughter Triggers Endogenous Opioid Release in Humans (try saying that after a couple of lagers), which was published in JNeurosci, the official journal of neuroscience for the Society of Neuroscience, Sandra Manninen and her team used a technique known as positron emission tomography to show that social laughter triggers the release of endorphins (also known as “endogenous opioids”) in specific areas of the brain. Let’s be clear. The more endorphins you have flying around, the better you are going to feel, and that’s why so many people become addicted to running and other exercises. But what the study also showed was that the more of these opioid receptors someone had in their brain, the more they were prone to contagious laughter.

That’s all well and good, but positivity is contagious in other ways. Who have you interacted with today, either online, over the phone, or face-to-face? Who could you have interacted with but didn’t? That is, how many people did you walk past but didn’t acknowledge? They say what goes around comes around, and that makes sense in a way. With every action we take, no matter how seemingly insignificant, we make a choice to either add something positive or something negative to the world, and everything we do causes a kind of ripple. I am told this is what the Buddhists mean by the word “karma”. By being positive, you can have an uplifting impact on the world around you. What are other people going through? Are they suffering more than you? Might they be considering the unthinkable? 

Remember that other phrase most of us learnt at school—love thy neighbour as thyself. Just saying “hello” to that neighbour you never speak to could mean the difference between them carrying on for another day or throwing in the towel. Being kind to a stranger might change how they interact with others and how the rest of their day pans out. Perhaps that argument they were previously destined to have with their spouse later in the day could be averted because a random act of kindness changes their mindset. You can create positive ripples.

The other thing about the infectiousness of positivity is that you have no idea how much of an impact your kindness, thoughtfulness and compassion is having on the other person. If positivity is a contagious virus, albeit a good one, the other person may be asymptomatic, so you will have no idea how much you have touched them… but you will have touched them. I have direct experience of this because of the times when people I have inspired as children have approached me later in life, having grown into adults, to tell me how something I had said had changed their thinking forever. My old English teacher Mr Hill ignited a spark in me when he encouraged me to take part in a public speaking competition. The lesson here is not to carry out any act of kindness or positive action because you want the pat on the back or to see the other person jumping for joy, although it’s nice when those things happen. Be positive because it is right and assume that you are making a difference… because you are. 

Sometimes it is not what we do that makes the difference but what we don’t do. There is a famous quote, which Google tells me is usually attributed to Edmund Burke. I have heard a few variations, but it is basically this: “All that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.” When we witness an injustice or something that is not as it should be, do we just walk on by or do we try to do something about it?

Years ago, long before I became a speaker, when I used to work in a factory, we had a really unsavoury and openly racist boss. He was one of those people who was continually ranting about things he had heard on the news and trying to put the world to rights, except most of the time, he put all the blame on black people and anyone he viewed as not being entitled to live in this country. I knew it was wrong, and I think many of my other colleagues knew it was wrong, but we were on the lowest rung. People were afraid to stick their necks out. I know I was. However, the longer it went on, the more unbearable it became. Not only did it feel like a betrayal of my own values, it also felt as though I was betraying my niece, who is mixed-race. We were all white. I had no black colleagues, but how would I feel if I saw this man speaking in front of my niece in the way he was speaking in front of us? Something snapped. 

It was a Wednesday morning, and I remember feeling hungry because it was almost time for lunch. The boss was pacing around, chuntering on as usual, when he suddenly said something shockingly ignorant and racist. I stopped what I was doing, heart pounding, and I turned round and called for his attention. 

“Excuse me,” I shouted. “I don’t think you should be saying things like that. To be honest, I think you’re behaving like a racist.” There was a moment of silence… and time stopped in that huge room, but not for long. The boss reacted with fury and began berating me in front of everyone. His rage was unstoppable. How dare I speak to him that way, who did I think I was, he would speak to his staff any way he wanted, and I could always walk out if I didn’t like it…

I was only saved when he had to take a phone call and the buzzer went to signal that it was time for lunch. The company’s trade union representative approached me and asked if I would like to take things further. I don’t remember working there for long after that incident, so I will never know if my voice made a difference. Who knows? Maybe that one act of defiance encouraged others to speak out. I hope so.

That’s the thing about taking positive action. We never know how many other people around us are being impacted by our behaviour. So, the more mindful we are about our own level of positivity, the more of an impact we can make. 

What can you do to be more positive today? How many people can you infect with your spirit?

What are you going to do to boost your P-number?