A Little Experiment that Means a Great Deal

Sociologists took a group of eighty people and put them together in a cocktail party. Before they were sent into the room, each of 78 people was privately told to only talk about positive things, while two of them were told only to talk about negative things. This exercise was repeated twenty times with different people, and the results are amazing. In each case, without exception, it took on average six minutes before the two negative people hooked up with each other and they continued to talk with each other for the remaining 24 minutes of the experiment.

Like attracts like. Losers love losers and winners won’t tolerate their presence. Birds of the feather flock together. Who are YOU flocking with, and where is that flock heading? Negative people attract other negative people like powerful magnets. Years ago, when I was a manager for Holiday Inns, I was trained to be a certified On-the-Job-Trainer, using Transactional Analysis as one of our tools. One of the terms I will never forget is the one used to describe the communication process between people with a victim mentality: it was called, “Ain’t it awful?” Winners will be talking about their dreams and goals and losers will be talking about accidents, shootings and the bad weather.

Here’s a little experiment for you: Listen to what people are talking about, see whom they’re talking with, and you’ll get a pretty good idea of where they’re headed.

Robin J. Elliott www.DollarMakers.com