ChurchProduction.com: Are you an attic person or a basement person? I don't mean where you physically live, but your attitude. If you live in the basement you are constantly feeling down, inferior and depressed. Attic people are joyful and excited about serving God. Wherever you live you will try to pull the people around you to come and join you there.
8 comments:
I enjoyed this article and it does make me think about my daily thoughts and where I live, in the basement or the attic, each day as I work. So if we find ourselves being more negative than positive what can we do to get ourselves out of that? Taking the initiative to say two positive things like the article said will help start that transition but I think there are more steps. After working in the encouraging comments each day then next comes the accountability partner. If you are serious about being a more positive person than a friend to keep you in check can help you transition faster. They can keep you in check each day and when they see you reverting back to your negative side they can remind you of your goal to be more encouraging. Having support in any kind of transition can help you immensely.
This article left me thinking about how I come across to others. In such a high stress envrionment like Carnegie Mellon, the difference of a smile could make the difference. Being conscious of our facial expressions or how often we smile or laugh in the day could be beneficial towards our mental state, "basement or attic" and make the difference for people around us.
As I quickly learned the work in college tends to pile on rather fast. When I get bogged down with work it is easy for me, and probably most of us, to revert to the "basement." I think it is important that we remind ourselves of not only the pay off of working hard, but the immediate positive results. Getting work done allows us to be ready for class, and prepared to learn and apply the information we are learning to our everyday goals.
Living in the "attic" when approaching anything will help you to put forth more positive, well received energy. At the end of the day, people like to be around happy people. The "basement" can get coid.
A good leader is always someone who can raise the moral of the group. It is a universally known fact that happy people do better work. Looking past the strong religious emphasis the article promotes a valid method; to be an encouraging leader one needs to show appreciation. Too often think people feel like they are over looked and under valued, and when that happens they begin to create this energetic black hole in the work place and begin to become the “basement people”. So when a leader is being an encouraging leader they are helping to create a better and more productive environment for everyone.
I wish the article could have address the type of person who stands in the middle between the attic and the basement because I feel like in any group setting those people exist. Often times these people hold leadership potential but are holding out from contributing out of fear of messing with the rhythm of the group. I would hope these “ghost” leaders are also taking inspiration from examining the definition of encouraging and finding the strength to reach their true potential.
It is important to note that a truly great leader knows when to follow and let someone else take the lead.
I have always been the kind of person who believe that "attitude is everything" or that positivity can be a big factor in whether you can actually succeed in something. According to this article, I would be an attic person. I love to encourage people that they can do anything if they believe they can. If you have confidence in what you are doing, the scared feeling you get won't mess you up as much. I also think it is important, like the article mentions, to encourage others because it creates an environment where people feel comfortable and want to do their best and try their hardest. If a community was poisoned with disbelief or negativity, it is easy for those in the community to not even want to try because they believe they will fail anyway. It is amazing what people can do when they feel supported and confident in themselves. As you can probably tell I'm a 'cheesy' person, but I don't see that as a flaw, I see it as an advantage:)
Encouragement is definitely a management skill that I find is often forgotten, particularly in an educational setting. It can be a bit of an enigma for the college student, speaking from my own perspective, simply because you want to be surrounded by educational staff and faculty that encourage you and build you up, yet you also know it is your professors responsibility to also tear you down and poke at the weak spots when needed. While frustrating, its definitely a reminder to really look at and appreciate the times that your educational facility is encouraging, which if you pay attention to it, it really should be more encouraging than not. Beyond that, from a students perspective, it really is a good reminder to be encouraging of your peers, especially if they share a creative major like ours. Creativity is one of those things that needs encouragement more than anything else to exist, just because it can be so ridiculously scary to put work out into the world, and sometimes its not all that easy to just be trusting that its good. Its incredibly helpful when dealing with creative work to have an encouraging support system there to say, hey, trust yourself.
There is nothing wore than leaving a long day of work, or rehearsal and feeling completely sucked dry of any inspiration or encouragement. It is horrible to feel like the person you take your direction from has no intention for you to enjoy the work you're doing or even help you do it to the best of your abilities. As someone who finds themselves in the leadership role more often than not, I always make it a priority to be, above all, up lifting. No one wants to do work for someone who "brings them down into the basement", and even if work does get done I can pretty much ensure that it won't be the persons best work. This idea is multiplied significantly in the arts. Creativity can be so easily stifled by negativity, it is imperative that whoever leads in an artistic environment is fostering new ideas and helping people grow, not the opposite. The job of a good leader is not to be the person in charge, and reign over those below them, but to encourage the people that they are working with to rise to the occasion. Even though I don't particularly love the attic, basement analogy it is true that it is important to rise people up and not bring them down. Because no one is always an attic person, but it's the job of the leader to get their team as close to the top of the house as possible.
This article definitely reminded me the power of encouragement, which is something we can easily forget in such a busy and competitive society today. I think everyone will have phases where they fall into the “basement” category and phases when they are “attic” people. It’s really important that even when people are feeling the “basement”, they don’t take it out on the people around them since this will just create a negative spiral for everyone. In the professional world (regardless of profession but I think especially in collaborative fields), this negative emotion can even affect one’s work. I think being able to be encouraging is not only the team leaders job, but everyone else on the team should try to do so as well.
Like many other things, I don't think this is binary. I like the attic vs basement metaphor because that implies there are other floors. I think if you are a bouncy ball of energy all the time, people might not take you seriously. Alternatively, if you are an Eeyore, no one is going to want to interact with you. There is a happy medium somewhere that involves being a friendly person while still saying what needs to be said. Sometimes outright encouragement isn't the right thing to do. Although I suppose if you are the TD/Worship director for a church then the attitude makes more sense. Different organizations require different things, but I would imagine that being a TD at a church is more about leading a team and having a good time than say in the commercial world where there is money on the line.
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