Guild Pain Point #3 : Negativity
The bane of our times — it’s pernicious, capricious and contagious
Author: Sean Moffitt . Grey Swan Guild Founder and CEO, Cygnus Ventures
“Negativity is a thief. It steals happiness, kills dreams, and destroys opportunities.” — Anonymous
Grey Swan Guild’s Seven Pain Points for Making Better Sense of the World
These are the seven things that confront our mission. We obsess about them. We seek to overcome them. We seek to navigate around them. We seek to alleviate the bad consequences of them.
We are profiling our third one here, it is pernicious, capricious and contagious — it’s Negativity.
III. Negativity
In our current world, there appears to be a self-perpetuating cycle of negativity that sees the clouds more frequently than the sun. We see it more now in political discourse, and in media of all types. Negative thinking not only creates poor thinking, it also affects your hope about the future, low self-worth and a range of physixal and mental helath disorders like depression, anxiety, chronic worry and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Instead, one of our Guild’s four values is aspiration (without the condition of blind hope) our Guild attempts to see the great and good where it exists, alongside the bad and opportunity. One of our rituals is to surface good news at the start of each one of our meetings.
Facets of our Pain Point Negativity:
The Guild has built itself from the ashes of our COVID and we well understand the mental health and behavioral effects on the negative. Over the last few dacdes and heightened recently, the general tendency bas been to focus on and emphasize the unfavorable, adverse, or harmful aspects of situations, events, or experiences. We try to overcome:
- Pessimism — the general tendency to expect the worst possible outcome in any given situation.
- Cynicism — the belief that people are motivated purely by self-interest, often leading to a distrustful and dismissive attitude towards others.
- Imposter Syndrome — the persistent notion that one’s own achievements are undeserved and the fear of being exposed as a “fraud.”
- Perfectionism — the damaging strive for flawlessness and setting excessively high standards, often leading to a focus on shortcomings and mistakes.
- Complaining — critical thinking falling into the trap of chronic gripes — expressing dissatisfaction or fault-finding with people, situations, or oneself.
- Catastrophizing — imagining and expecting the worst possible outcomes of a situation, often out of proportion to the actual likelihood or severity.
- Negative Influence — a safe haven for positive ideas versus the negative sway of 1st-thru-4th places (home, profession, community, industry).
- Blaming — getting beyond the scrutiny of people versus ideas, avoiding attributing all problems or failures to external factors or other people.
- Black and White Thinking — viewing situations in extreme, all-or-nothing terms, without recognizing the grey areas or nuances.
- Prisoner to the Past — focusing excessively on past mistakes, failures, or negative experiences, without being able to pivot to a different future.
- Fear of Failure — a fear of making mistakes, often leading to avoidance of challenges or opportunities, without the benfits of experimentation.
The Guild’s Response to Negativity
The Guild’s answer to negativity is aspiration — owning a can-do spirit, non-ordinary stance on the world, and innovative posture on what’s possible.
We do this through:
Experiences — Events: one of our four key marquee events of the year is our new February Education Week, putting the relevant skills and knowledge in the hands of professionals who seek to expand their future capacities and performance.
Intelligence — Content: we produce regular episodes of content — a Medium magazine, a Grey Matters quarterly, and soon-to-be podcast network where we ritualize looking at: the great, the good, the grey, the bad, the ugly and the tapestry — a balanced valence at looking at the world.
Community: we host monthly Salon conversations with various constituencies of the Guild by tackling and overcoming seven key challenging questions.
Ventures : we have built a curriculum of positive critical thinking, hopeful futures thinking and mindful physical, emotional, and mental well-being in our teen targeted educational venture Futuregazing.
Read up on the other Pain Point posts
Pain Points for Making Sense of the World Overview :
Uncertainty — Pain Point #1
Bias & Noise — Pain Point #2:
Grey Swan Guild — the Calls to Action
if you have an interest in responding to uncertainty, our pain point chasing and ourparticular Guild view on the world. You have a few options.
First, join our Grey Swan Guild Linkedin page Grey Swan Guild — we post daily, usually surfacing interesting observations that respond to our pain points, giving you a first view of what’s upcoming, telling you how to get involved, or recapping what cool things we have just done.
Secondly, if you want to get higher up on our radar and profile your interests, declare your intentions and potentially take on a leading or contributing role in the Guild, there is only one way to do it. Become an official member. Here’s the form.
If your enthusiasm still remains whetted, and you love going below, around and above the surface of our world’s biggest issues, become part of our standing panel of 400+ analytical and observational minds. Become a Global Sensemaker. Here’s the form.
Not satisfied with just thinking, but would rather solve these pain points too. We have designed a ventures wing to our guild called Cygnus Ventures that has embarked upon twelve different ventures to get after solutions and opportunities that tackle making better sense of the world through our well-defined pain points. Become a Cygnus Venturist. Here is the form.
Trying to find the central thread and on-ramp to participation and still have questions? Each and every month, usually in the first week of the month, we host new member onboarding Regattas, where we meet you face to face and share in why we exist, what we do, who you are, explore some interactive queries and answer every one of our queries. Join us at our next regatta in July. Here’s the link.
