Developing the habit of using positive language, and behaving in a positive manner, can create opportunities that are life changing.

This is a true story about a businessman called Marc who was born with very few advantages in life. His parents ran a small local grocery store in a working-class suburb and the family all lived in a small cramped house nearby.

After school, Marc used to help in the grocery store, packing shelves, sweeping the floors and taking out the garbage.

At the age of eighteen he was drafted for two years.

He was not a very fit young man and carried a little too much weight. When he enlisted, his fellow recruits bullied him and taunted him at every opportunity. He was different from them so he made an easy target.

Benefits of positive behaviour

Very soon, Marc learned that turning the other cheek only encouraged the abuse, so he looked for a positive strategy to gain the friendship of these aggressive young men.

He soon noticed that most of them were smokers. In one of his first letters home, he asked his parents to send him several packs of cigarettes from their shop which he kept hidden in his locker.

Whenever any of his fellow soldiers ran short, Marc would provide them with cigarettes from his stock and, very soon, word got around. Realizing that he was now the source of a much-valued commodity, his antagonists soon became his protectors.

His parents helped, of course, by sending him regular supplies which he soon began to sell or barter among the soldiers in the camp.

When Marc was discharged and went looking for a job, he answered a newspaper advertisement for a shopping centre manager. Knowing little about retailing other than what he’d learned in his parents’ small store, he spent several hours walking around the mall. In his words, he wanted to get a feel for the place before his meeting the employer.

In the interview, he spoke confidently about the different stores and the other facilities and even had some suggestions for improvement. The boss was so impressed, he hired Marc on the spot.

None of the other applicants had even bothered to visit the property and this lack of initiative cost them the job. Marc’s positive language, backed by his confident behaviour, marked him out as an exceptional candidate.

A mindset for success

What Marc’s approach teaches us is that positive language and behaviour create the right attitude for success and achievement.

So don’t just think of language as a tool for verbal exchange. It’s more important than that: use it to project confidence and the desire to succeed.

Choose active rather than passive tenses – ‘we will do it,’ not ‘we will get it done.’ Don’t listen to people who use excuses like ‘we tried it last year and it didn’t work’ or ‘it’s not our responsibility.’

When you look into anyone’s failures, you’ll often find the biggest problem was a poor attitude and a lack of commitment right from the beginning.

Negative words and phrases include ‘don’t, won’t, can’t, might not, maybe, perhaps, sometimes,’ and many more.

Your language should be compelling, positive, clear and brief, and you should back up your words with action, just as Marc did.

By the way, he is now the chairman and majority shareholder of a global property empire with billions of dollars’ worth of assets in Europe, Africa and Australia.

Smart Tip

Analyze your working day and the tasks you perform.

• How can you reframe what you do by using more active and positive behavior?
• Think about the colleagues you are dealing with. How can you be more positive and less passive? Can you make their work more effective by changing your approach to a more positive one?
• Be more aware of the language you are using at work. Practice replacing negative and passive words for active ones.
• Make a list of all the passive and negative words to replace them without diluting their meaning.