Viral Thinking: A negative virus is something very small, unseen, that multiplies quickly when given the right environment. This is what we see with the pandemic or most flu viruses. Viral thinking is when there is something small, unconscious in your thinking and believing process that keeps you from doing what you want to achieve or causes you harm to others. For instance, you may have the belief that competition alone is what stimulates economic growth whereas cooperation impedes creative impetus. If you have that virus, then you will hide your information from competitors and be every vigilant so that they don’t steal your ideas. The recent production of vaccines by various companies proves that the viral belief is incorrect. In the development of the vaccines it wa a combination of cooperation and striving really hard with creative impetus that shorten the process from the normal 10 years to just a matter of a couple of months. Thomas Edison’s workplace was a large open space where everyone could see each other’s work and spark off of it. Imagine what would have happened if Edison and Tesla, both brilliant inventors, could have worked together in the inventing process.

Another common virus is that the way you help a child to achieve is to push them to work really hard by finding where they are weak and pointing it out until they improve. While hard work is a positive characteristic of people who achieve a lot, constantly pointing out negatives weakens people’s resolves. It turns out that creativity along with hard work is much better formula for achievement than just hard work alone. It is also more effective if encouragement (finding positives) is at a rate of at least 5 times that of the corrections.

I woke up this morning with my own negative viral thinking that I found while doing my journal work. My virus was the belief that I am too small to have an impact on a lot of people. It had the effect of stopping me in working consistently as if my mind was thinking, “What’s the use?” So I decide to change the belief to a positive virus. My new belief is that when I continually do positive work, it spread in positive ways in places where I couldn’t have possible imagined. What is your negative virus? What would be a better belief for you?