It was another opportunity to listen to the revered man of God speak at my company’s monthly training session. Once again, I was not disappointed, as Reverend Tope Popoola got on stage to talk on the topic ‘The Winning Attitude…Staying Positive in a Tough Working Environment’.
The hall was filled to near capacity and we were all held spell-bound as the Reverend did once again what he does best – motivational speaking. By the way, Reverend Tope Popoola is the senior pastor at the Business Church, and also founding president of the Leadership Centre, both headquartered in Ibadan.
Looking back…
I had met the reverend through a colleague and was so thrilled by the depth of understanding and knowledge that flowed from him, that I immediately invited him to write for my then medium. He has since so been doing in his column titled LIFE featuring in the personal finance pull-out.
So it was that on this particular occasion, the reverend shared insightful thoughts on the subject of attitudes, with a host of state-of-the-art audio-visual facilities quite common at his presentations.
He started by stating the objective of his presentation as ‘Learning to develop and sustain a positive attitude to life and work even when surrounded by much negativity.’
So much negativity…
By negativity, Popoola explained that he meant negative work environments, other people’s negative behaviours, changing environment, previous nasty experiences, negative world view and the determinism theory.
He enthused that one ought to be a positive thinker, seeing the best in all situations, asserting that those that are positive thinkers were not born so but chose to be so!
Illustrating with beautiful visuals, the reverend argued that one should attempt to be ‘bullet-proofed’ to the negative ‘bullets’ in his work environment, rather than try to dodge the bullets as the latter attempt would see you definitely getting hit by the negative bullets.
Wearing a bullet-proof armour through self-change
Popoola insisted that one can only wear bulletproof armour through self-change, and that this actually involves three things – changing your thinking, your attitude and your behaviour.
According to him, you change your thinking by observing logically rather than emotionally in every situation, by observing your thinking and by managing your self-talk.
Then you change your attitude by changing from the inside out, by accepting your responsibility under God, and not buck-passing the responsibility for who you are, for what you have and for what you do. Then, of course, you are able to take control of your attitude.
Finally, you change your behaviour by truly assessing, determining and disciplining yourself, and by deliberately and actively choosing your behaviour.
Steps towards changing behaviour
I was most impressed by the steps through which one changes his behaviour, as posited by the Reverend. According to him, one goes from unconscious incompetence, at which level he cannot behave right and does not realize this; to the level of conscious incompetence, at which level he cannot behave right but realizes this, and thus desires change. One then goes to the level of conscious competence, at which level he can now behave rightly mainly because he makes conscious effort to do so and knows it. Finally is the highest level of unconscious competence, at which level he behaves rightly without any conscious efforts and without realizing it.
Parting shots
In his conclusion, the Reverend shared a number of pertinent parting shots on how to add on positive behaviour:
Influence your environment, focus on the good of each day, spread a smile around, do not hesitate to say ‘please’, ‘thank you’ and ‘sorry’, practice empathy, always evaluate your behaviour, and never miss an opportunity to complement others.
Other pieces of advice along these lines include making sure you keep promises, thinking like a stakeholder in the office, having a forgiving view of people, keeping an open mind about change, counting to a hundred if necessary whenever provoked, seeing criticism as an opportunity to improve, and cultivating a healthy sense of humour.
