It’s National Grump Day today. Quite fitting that Wednesdays are named hump days! While everyone likes a moan and a whinge every now and again – sometimes it helps us reframe the problem or gain perspective – all too often, we get buried in it.
The more negativity we see – the more negativity we see – sooner or later, EVERYTHING seems to be negative. Obviously, negativity in the comping community takes many forms – from not winning, dodgy promoters, unfair advantages, time poverty, low odds, duplicate accounts and cheaters etc. so I’m not saying it doesn’t exist – but focusing on it will give you the competition grumps!
Why clear out your grumps?
Focusing on negativity makes your brain less receptive to positivity. Positivity INCREASES your peripheral vision and makes you luckier.
Richard Wiseman, author of ‘Luck Factor’, showed how thinking you are lucky and positive affects how lucky you will be.
This ISN’T hogwash! In a controlled experiment, ‘lucky’ and ‘unlucky’ people were given a newspaper and asked to count the photographs. The lucky (i.e – POSITIVE!) people saw the newspaper text, which said: ‘Stop counting the photos, you have won £250 – tell the researcher’. The ‘unlucky’ people were focused solely on counting the photographs.
Fear based thinking (someone will cheat, the process is unfair etc.) while it isn’t untrue, will PREVENT you from seeing the wider perspective.
We’ve all heard of beginners luck – and this notion of looking at the hobby in a positive, excited light all feeds into the experiment conducted by Wiseman. Negativity makes you unlucky!
How to Clear the Grumps
Think back to when you first started entering competitions. Did you keep a diary? Maybe you have a few Facebook posts that you can re-read from those early days. Notice how fresh, new and exciting the competition hobby looked. It hasn’t changed – you just need to look for it.
Befriending a new ‘comper’ and encouraging them to keep going will work wonders. By suggesting that they should enter more and trust that they will win might make you feel the same!
Every time you think of a negative – force yourself to think of a positive. For example, voting competitions can invite people to buy their votes, while this is true it is ALSO true, that the promoters will STILL like your entry, and other people will like it as well and they will vote for you. In this case, your win will be even more valuable because you have managed to beat the cheats! I won a voting competition like this – others had way more votes than me, but the promoter liked my entry and gave me a prize anyway! It DOES happen!
What do you do to alleviate being in the competition grumps? Have you got tried and tested strategies for encouraging yourself? We’d love to hear all about them! As usual, let us know in the comments below!