My Favorite Mistake: Learning Without Blame in Business and Leadership From Self-Doubt to Success: How a Positivity Expert Don Sandel Launched his own Business
Founder of GoPositiv
Show notes, video, transcript, and more
My guest for Episode #190 of the My Favorite Mistake podcast is Don Sandel. He’s a former executive turned leadership coach and is the founder of GoPositiv.
He’s been leading talent development efforts for small and large organizations for the last few decades and has transitioned those skills and experiences into GoPositiv and now to books as well. He’s the author of the book Positive Mindshift: Making Good Things Happen in Life and Work.
He began studying the brain and its effect on learning about a decade ago, and discovered compelling and irrefutable research around positivity.
In this episode, Don tells his favorite mistake story about a time when he was working for a large global company and he listened to self-doubt triggered by a comment from his boss. Why did he give the worst presentation of his life? And what did he learn from this experience in a way that inspired him to start studying positivity??
We also talk about questions and topics including:
- What sorts of positive self talk would you say before giving a speech??
- How to aggressively battle the negative self talk and change that to positive self talk?
- What prompted you to study positivity? How did you study this?
- Not being a “Pollyanna”?
- John Saunders, who introduced us — his episode
- Does positivity lead to better medical outcomes if you have cancer or another serious ailment?
- Weight loss and motivation — talking about positive motivations instead of negative / barriers?
- Losing weight vs. getting healthier??
- Is it too negative to think about mistakes? How can we be positive about mistakes?
- The definition of optimism – thinking things will be better
- “If dream it, you can do it” —- really?
- Is “toxic positivity” really a concern? What does that phrase mean to you?
- How would positivity have helped in your previous corporate jobs? Were better performing organizations more positive? Experience vs research?
- Optimistic salespeople