Written by Prime Strategies Partner, Rob Drower.

One of the most undervalued facets of SME Businesses is their Team Culture. Building a positive team culture and having an optimism running through your business is priceless. Easy, yes? Maybe not so easy, in a country known for our ‘tall poppy syndrome’ and higher levels of anxiety and depression than most countries.

So how do we negate negativity and pessimism in our lives, and feed a positive attitude into our team culture? Here are my top 5 strategies for building a resilient positive team culture in your business.

1:  Stop trying to be happy

Stop putting on the happy face. Think about it: “Trying” to be happy means having to define exactly what “happy” looks like, then putting steps in place to get there. But almost no one can concretely define happiness.

Instead, be engaged. Being engaged bypasses pessimism. Why? Because instead of thinking about the negative aspects of your world, your mind is engaged in an activity that has a positive goal or end point. If you’re not actively working on something, your mind tends to spiral into worst case scenarios.

2:  The big picture

The world is a big place and if we think about all the things happening in the world today then our everyday negatives seem pretty insignificant. On top of that, existence outside of our small world entails a lot of life and activity we’re not even aware of – countless positive elements that feed into the bigger picture. Is the trend of meaningless meetings at work or the few pounds you can’t seem to lose really going to upset the order of things? No.

3:  Lots of Chances

Life is not a ‘one and done’ experience. If you experience or create something positive, it’s likely that it will happen again in some form. A trip and fall doesn’t mean you won’t ever get up again. To the contrary, we were built to handle A LOT of falls, and to get ourselves back up again.

Remember we learn more from mistakes, we have an incredible ability to learn from experiences. If you add all of that together, life really does seem to favour the positive.

4:  You can make an impact

We’ve all indulged in apathy: “What difference can I make?”

The exact opposite is true. We make waves whether we want to or not. Science even proves this point. Issac Newton postulated that “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.” The question is, what actions are you taking to create a positive reaction? Move in a positive, affirming way and the results will also be positive.

5:  Zero tolerance

This one is easy. Walk away from all who start propounding negativism. Be intentional about the people you who you spend your time with. Take stock of how your peers act, and if they’re leaning toward pessimism, move in the opposite direction. Respond with positive comments, or walk.